2021 marks the 50th anniversary of the first release of Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation of A Clockwork Orange, and 60 years since Anthony Burgess completed his most famous novel. To celebrate the anniversary, we are presenting an online series called The Clockwork Collection, with a focus on A Clockwork Orange. Each month we’ll be sharing […]
Clockwork Controversy: Myth: Mick Jagger once owned the film rights to A Clockwork Orange. Fact: Mick Jagger never owned the rights. But there were rumours that he and the Rolling Stones would play Alex and the droogs. ‘We, the undersigned, do hereby protest with extreme vehemence as well as shattered illusions (in you) the preference […]
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 […]
2021 marks the 50th anniversary of the first release of Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation of A Clockwork Orange, and 60 years since Anthony Burgess completed his most famous novel. To celebrate the anniversary, we present an online series called The Clockwork Collection, with a focus on A Clockwork Orange. Each month, we’ll be sharing a […]
Our annual competition to find the best in new arts reviews has launched, and this year we are delighted to welcome Observer pop critic Kitty Empire to the judging panel. The Observer / Anthony Burgess Prize for Arts Journalism challenges writers to create an engaging 800-word review of a work in the arts. It’s run […]
James Joyce’s famous novel Ulysses, published 99 years ago in 1922, takes place on a single day: 16 June 1904. Anthony Burgess celebrates this date in one of the songs from his Ulysses-inspired musical, Blooms of Dublin, with these lyrics: ‘Today / It’s the sixteenth of June today / And from morning till noon / […]
2021 marks the 50th anniversary of the first release of Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation of A Clockwork Orange, and 60 years since Anthony Burgess completed his most famous novel. To celebrate the anniversary, we present an online series called The Clockwork Collection, with a focus on A Clockwork Orange. Each month, we’ll be sharing a […]
Clockwork Controversy: Myth: Anthony Burgess hated Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film of A Clockwork Orange. Fact: Anthony Burgess thought the film was a masterpiece and that Kubrick was a great filmmaker. But Burgess resented having to defend the film on television and in print as it was not his own work. Anthony Burgess had seen Stanley […]
Kevin Jackson, who died on 10 May aged 66, was a man who distinguished himself in many areas of creativity. Among other accomplishments, he was a writer, broadcaster, film director, poet, songwriter, and anthologist. His knowledge and enthusiasms were large and contained multitudes. He was also a gifted raconteur and a master of the art […]
The second in our series of Dystopian Dialogues is a conversation with Nathan Waddell from the University of Birmingham about George Orwell, Anthony Burgess and dystopia. Burgess was strongly influenced by Orwell, and in his book 1985 he places Nineteen Eighty-Four in the context of a ravaged post-war Britain. He writes: ‘You saw the effects […]