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 […]
Burgess’s extravagant sketch of his possible origins. By Will Carr.
In 1970, Burgess moved with his family from Malta to Italy. They settled in the town of Bracciano, where they bought a fifteenth-century house on the cobbled Piazza Padella. This house would be the centre of Burgess’s creative life until he moved to Monaco in 1975, despite frequent trips to Malta and the United States. […]
This sketch by the Italian film director Franco Zeffirelli was drawn for Anthony Burgess’s son, Andrew (also known as Paolo Andrea). It appears to be a greeting for Easter 1979, and shows a recipe for a desert called ‘the sweet of “Passion”’. Zeffirelli describes it as an ‘Easter offering’. The ingredients include ricotta cheese, pistachios, […]
Direct from a sold-out, award-winning London run, director Alexandra Spencer-Jones’s electrifying, critically-acclaimed stage production of A Clockwork Orange will premiere in New York City this fall in a limited Off-Broadway engagement at New World Stages (340 West 50th Street). Jonno Davies, who led the London cast, will make his New York stage debut in the lead role of […]
Anthony Burgess’s copy of Italian Food by Elizabeth David is battered, ripped and stained, suggesting heavy use. It also contains scraps of paper which mark certain recipes, giving an insight into what Burgess may have been cooking. Burgess’s edition of Italian Food was published by Penguin in 1967, and there is internal evidence that he […]
Many items in the collections at the Anthony Burgess Foundation reveal Burgess’s connections with other writers. Some of these connections are unexpected, such as his long correspondences with Angela Carter and Shirley Conran, but some, such as his friendship with the Italian novelist and semiologist Umberto Eco, seem to make more sense. Burgess’s and Eco’s […]
Our new exhibition, Cartomancy: Anthony Burgess and the Tarot, is now open at the Engine House. Anthony Burgess was fascinated by the possibility of predicting the future. Drawing on previously unseen material from the Burgess Foundation collections, this exhibition explores Anthony Burgess’s creative relationship with dreams, horoscopes, and the mysteries of the Tarot. Burgess owned several […]
SUNDAY 2 JULY 2017 19:00: Welcome Event and Drinks Reception Join us at the Burgess Foundation for the launch of The Irwell Edition of the Works of Anthony Burgess. MONDAY 3 JULY 2017 9:00-10:00: Panel 1 Simon Johnson, ‘The Beautiful Belle Burgess: A Biographical Study of Elizabeth Burgess’ Will Carr, ‘Anthony Burgess’s Blackpool’ 10:00-10:10: Break […]