We reveal a gruesome inspiration behind Anthony Burgess’s novel Earthly Powers: the Jonestown suicide cult leader Jim Jones. One of the pivotal events in Earthly Powers is the establishment and violent dissolution of Godfrey Manning’s religious cult, known as the ‘Children of God’. Although this cult seems to be well ingrained in the narrative of […]

  Anthony Burgess is a brilliant English novelist. I remember feeling greatly pleased on reading a review he did for the Observer on my fourth novel, The Secret Ladder from the Guyana Quartet. This happened some time before we met. I mention this now as a token of the generous, unobtrusive approach he made to […]