Ernest Hemingway died on 2 July 1961. Anthony Burgess was in Leningrad when he heard the news, gathering the material for Honey for the Bears and A Clockwork Orange. In a later review of A.E. Hotchner’s biography of Hemingway, reprinted in Urgent Copy (1968), Burgess recalled: ‘Many young Russians I drank with asked me, as […]

As we continue to explore our collections with our Inside The Archive blog series, we load up the video player to watch Anthony Burgess on film. Anthony Burgess was one of the first novelists to embrace the medium of television and appeared on the small screen many times throughout his career. As well as becoming […]

Born in 1917, Anthony Burgess would have celebrated his 103rd birthday on 25 February 2020. But what did he think the twenty-first century would be like? It is possible to offer an answer to this question, thanks to a newly-discovered document from the archive. Back in the mists of 1984, the year when Anthony Burgess […]

From 1963 to 1968 Anthony Burgess was an occasional television critic for the Listener. The majority of his published reviews were of documentaries, but towards the end of his tenure he also reviewed some television drama, including The Prisoner, the classic series which blends the tropes of James Bond secret agents with those of science fiction. […]

Despite his literary persona, Anthony Burgess did not think the world of television below him. Not only was Burgess a television reviewer for The Listener, for which he wrote weekly columns between 1963 and 1968, but he also produced scripts for television throughout much of his career. Most notably, he was employed by Lew Grade […]