Anthony Burgess wrote about Christmas in a number of different contexts. His responses are always distinctive and flavoursome, like a glass of Madeira or a traditional British Christmas pudding, stuffed with fruit and sixpence coins. In the first volume of his autobiography, Little Wilson and Big God, Burgess recalls that one of his earliest published […]
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. […]
On December 7th, we welcome Manchester’s No Dice Collective as they team up with The Writing Squad for an end-of-the-world themed concert called Last Christmas especially commissioned by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation. Taking inspiration from the Burgess Foundation’s #FutureFictions season about all things apocalyptic, Last Christmas features music and spoken word by some of […]
Anthony Burgess was just ten years old when he saw Fritz Lang’s groundbreaking fantasy Metropolis on its release in Manchester in 1927. This, combined with his experience of the celebrated total eclipse of the sun in the same year, left a profound impression on him. Burgess remained fascinated by science fiction throughout his life. Burgess […]
In the early-1970s, Anthony Burgess worked on a screenplay for a proposed historical film about Edward, The Black Prince. The completed screenplay was never published and gathered dust in the archives at the Burgess Foundation until Adam Roberts discovered it. He began work on adapting it into a new novel, The Black Prince, published now […]
The Observer / Burgess prize is back, and is open to anyone internationally who has an interest in reviewing the arts. We set up this prize in partnership with The Observer newspaper to provide writers with a chance to take the next step in their career, and to champion the very best new critical writing. Anthony […]
Beard’s Roman Women is an odd book. The title, changed by the American publisher from Rome in the Rain, seems to suggest a historical novel, set in the Roman Empire. The text is partnered with strange photographs of ghostly Roman monuments, reflected in puddles and in glass. The story is clearly autobiographical yet is told […]
The Irwell Edition of the Works of Anthony Burgess, published in hardback by Manchester University Press, is a new series which aims to bring all of Burgess’s novels and non-fiction books back into print. Each volume contains an editor’s introduction, a newly edited text, extensive notes and annotations, plus previously unpublished materials drawn from the […]
Obscenity & the Arts began in an oblong room, the engine-house of a former mill, situated within an area once dubbed ‘Little Ireland’, surrounded as we were, by Anthony Burgess’s furniture. Indelible images of twentieth century criminality blazed large on a screen at the very end of the room. An articulate and astute Mark Blacklock […]
The Irwell Edition of the Works of Anthony Burgess, published in hardback by Manchester University Press, is a new series which aims to bring all of Burgess’s novels and non-fiction books back into print. Each volume contains an editor’s introduction, a newly edited text, extensive notes and annotations, plus previously unpublished materials drawn from the […]