The library at the Anthony Burgess Foundation often reveals unexpected preoccupations and cultural connections. Alongside the more literary titles are several books about showbusiness, including biographies of David Niven, Sir Lew Grade, Jayne Mansfield, and Josephine Baker. Burgess’s interests in film, performance and popular culture were varied, but he had a particular affection for comedy. […]
I met Anthony in the French House in the Summer of 1983. For those who don’t know it, the pub at 49 Dean Street in Soho is unlike any other. For years it still sported its original inn sign of the ‘York Minster’. But everyone called it by what it had been known as for […]
This sandalwood box was in Burgess’s possession from at least 1964, when he is pictured with it at his home in Etchingham (below). The intricate carving on the box suggests that Burgess may have acquired it in Malaya during the 1950s, though there is no record in the archive of him buying it. The box […]
This copy of Frank Herbert’s Dune dates from 1966, when Anthony Burgess reviewed it for the Observer. He was impressed by the scope of the book and by the calibre of Herbert’s literary creation. The review displays a wide knowledge of science-fiction conventions. Dune is set on Arrakis, a desert planet on which humans mine […]
Anthony Burgess was wonderful, extraordinary, kind of a good-looking guy, you know, tall, straight, chain smoker of these little cigarillos. He’s a great man now and everyone takes him seriously, but he was a lot of fun and especially with the wives we had a lot of good times. He talked about music a lot […]
Anthony Burgess was fascinated by the possibility of predicting the future. Introduced to the mysteries of the Tarot through studying T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land while at school, he later designed his own Tarot decks with his first wife Lynne and practised cartomancy himself, giving readings at a village fete in Adderbury, Oxfordshire in […]
The most telling memorial to Anthony Burgess would have been to leave a big white gap on the pages of the Observer or the Independent or whatever – the space his words would have filled. His death must supply work for a good handful of aspiring literary journalists, job opportunities galore. And that’s just in […]
I knew Anthony Burgess best during an intense seminar in Monte Carlo. In 1990, at the height of the Gabler-Kidd-Stephen Joyce controversy over the new Gabler text, Burgess had decided views which evolved and changed during the course of the deliberations. I was instrumental in bringing out that change and in recording his intelligent and […]
In 1984, Burgess released his book Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English Since 1939, a provocative list of his favourite novels in English. A recent discovery in the Burgess Foundation archive is a notebook containing a list of Burgess’s favourite books in translation. Internal evidence suggests that this list dates from the same year as […]
For me the beginning and the end of Burgess’s opus are represented by The Malayan Trilogy and Earthly Powers. Last things were one of his first and enduring concerns, though he never stinted on what went before. His first three novels, which comprise The Malayan Trilogy, are a hot, spicy curry; the ingredients include realism, […]