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 […]
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 Each volume contains an editor’s introduction, a newly edited text, extensive notes and annotations, plus previously unpublished materials drawn from the […]
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 Each volume contains an editor’s introduction, a newly edited text, extensive notes and annotations, plus previously unpublished materials drawn from the […]
In 1972, Burgess collaborated with the composer Stanley Silverman on a version of Sophocles’s Oedipus the King for the Tyrone Guthrie Theater in Minnesota. This production, notable for Burgess’s invention of language based on Indo-European, premiered that year, and was revived in 2017 as a radio play on BBC Radio 3. Oedipus the King was […]
Anthony Burgess bought this copy of Collected Poems 1909-35 by T.S. Eliot in 1936 on a trip to London with his father. He recalls the occasion in Little Wilson and Big God (1987): ‘I took the train from Euston and read through T.S. Eliot’s Collected Poems 1909-35, which I had bought in Charing Cross Road. […]
The International Anthony Burgess Foundation and the Manchester International Festival announce the world premiere of a new song cycle for baritone and orchestra by the composer Raymond Yiu, The World Was Once All Miracle. Commissioned by the Burgess Foundation as part of the celebrations of the centenary of Anthony Burgess in 2017, the new piece […]
We are delighted to continue our collaboration with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra as they play Symphony in C (1975) by Anthony Burgess on 4 July 2017 at the Bridgewater Hall as part of the Manchester International Festival. This special performance celebrating Burgess’s centenary will be the European premiere. Anthony Burgess claimed to have written three […]
Anthony Burgess had a close relationship with classical music – not only did it influence his novels, but he also wrote his own music. On the centenary of his birth, Burgess’s biographer and director of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, Andrew Biswell, presents music that inspired him, including pieces by Beethoven, Walton and Constant Lambert. […]
The Burgess Foundation’s archive includes a collection of audio recordings and films which exist in media such as Super 8, VHS and reel-to-reel audio tape. While some of this material has been digitised to allow easier access for researchers, other parts of the collection are still in their original formats. One intriguing item is a […]
Knowing of his love for and great knowledge of music, I interviewed Anthony in 1968 for one of the first BBC films I ever made, All My Loving, which was essentially about ‘pop music’ and all that that entailed in the late 1960s. The Monterey Festival was behind us, and Woodstock still to come. But […]