I knew Anthony Burgess, in a passing sort of way, first, when he was the writer-in-residence at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill in 1969-70. I had just begun my doctoral studies in English and lived with a number of other Jesuits who were pursuing degrees at either Chapel Hill or nearby Duke […]
The Anthony Burgess Foundation is pleased to announce a new collaboration with Incline Press, one of Britain’s best-loved letterpress printers. Under the title ‘Occasional Essays and Poems of Anthony Burgess’, this series of letterpress printed books will present a selection of rare Burgess works in handsome limited-edition volumes. Our previous collaboration with Incline Press was […]
A new exhibition at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation explores the connections between Anthony Burgess and Riddley Walker with artworks by Sam Meech. On its first publication in 1980, Anthony Burgess said of Russell Hoban’s novel Riddley Walker that ‘this is what literature is meant to be’. Set in a post-apocalyptic future two thousand years after […]
To celebrate the 101st anniversary of Anthony Burgess’s birth, we present a brand new discovery from our archive. Here is a rare recording of author Anthony Burgess singing. This is Burgess himself sitting at the piano, and the song is ‘The Young May Moon’, composed in 1807 and set to an old Irish tune. Dublin […]
The winners of this year’s Observer/Anthony Burgess Prize for Arts Journalism have been announced at a glittering ceremony hosted in London by The Observer newspaper. Felicity James wins the £3,000 first prize for her personal take on ‘At My Table’ by Nigella Lawson. Her successful entry will appear in the Observer New Review this Sunday. […]
Anthony Burgess’s The Bad-Tempered Electronic Keyboard: 24 Preludes and Fugues was released as a CD and download on 16 February 2018, in a new recording by the acclaimed Belgian pianist Stéphane Ginsburgh. Never previously recorded, Burgess’s cycle of preludes and fugues was written to celebrate the 300th anniversary of J.S. Bach’s birth and is dedicated to that […]
Orange mécanique est d’une brûlante actualité ; seule manque à sa violence la dimension raciale pour être tout à fait moderne. Burgess, à qui l’on doit le roman à l’origine du film, avait inventé sa propre langue pour les nécessités de l’histoire. Kubrick avait pris de grandes libertés avec son ultime chapitre, ce qui ne lui avait […]
Burgess’s extravagant sketch of his possible origins. By Will Carr.
When you’re a curious school-child who trips over an enthralling writer on your journey down the shelves in your local library, you don’t dream that he will one day review your first novel. By the age of about 16 I was so repelled by the tweedy self-satisfaction of the fashionable British novelists of the time […]
It was the best put-down ever. Although Anthony and I corresponded over various linguistic matters, I met him only once, during a conference organized – I think by the British Council – at Bush House in London, and I think it was in the early 1980s. As that sentence illustrates, I’ve forgotten all the relevant […]