When the atomic bomb destroyed the Japanese city of Hiroshima in August 1945, more than 140,000 people lost their lives, either in the blast itself or as a result of radiation sickness afterwards. This catastrophic event inaugurated a new era in world history and politics. From 1945 onwards, everyone would be living in the shadow […]
The new single by music producer and composer Sebastian Reynolds has a particularly Burgessian inspiration. In a guest post for our blog, Sebastian Reynolds writes about The Universe Remembers. The Universe Remembers, single taken from the EP, The Universe Remembers, released via Faith & Industry records My new single The Universe Remembers originally came about after […]
Exploring the music referenced in the brand new Irwell Edition of Anthony Burgess’s This Man and Music. This Man and Music, Anthony Burgess’s reflections on music, literature and autobiography, references a varied selection of music from the expected, such as Beethoven and Mozart, through the modernist influences on Burgess’s own music such as Stravinsky and […]
The Burgess Foundation’s collection of Anthony Burgess’s private library contains over 8000 volumes, many of which have come to us from Burgess’s houses around the world. Travels in Malaya, Malta, Italy and elsewhere, as well as the ravages of time, have unfortunately damaged some of the books: termites, floods, heat, sunlight and vigorous reading have […]
In 2013, the curators of the exhibition David Bowie Is revealed a list of the singer’s 100 favourite books. Among the titles that Bowie held dear are novels, political books, musical biographies and comic books, all of which reveal much about his preoccupations and the influences on his own creative output. Two of Anthony Burgess’s […]
From 1976, Anthony Burgess lived in a top-floor apartment on rue Grimaldi in Monaco. In 1988, there was an ingress of water from the roof of the building, which partly destroyed Burgess’s collection of manuscripts. According to a letter in the Burgess Foundation’s archive, the papers were being stored in a spare bathroom. Shortly after […]
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 […]
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. […]
Burgess’s literary and musical responses to the famous poet. By Andrew Biswell