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The second volume of Burgess's 'confessions', You've Had Your Time, was published. It is characteristically lively, informative and unreliable, and is prefaced by part of Chance by Joseph Conrad:
'...as I waited I thought that there's nothing like a confession to make one look mad; and that of all confessions a written one is the most detrimental all round. Never confess! Never, never!'
Mozart and the Wolf Gang, a novel about the life and work of Mozart, was published in the bicentenary year of the composer's death. Burgess described it as an 'original, lively, various and annoying homage to the greatest of the world's composers'.
Burgess delivered the eulogy at the comedian Benny Hill's memorial service on 23 September. Burgess and Hill were correspondents, with Hill regarding Burgess as 'the greatest living expert on sex' and Burgess describing Hill as 'a comic genius steeped in the British music-hall tradition' and 'one of the great artists of our age'.
A Mouthful Of Air: Language And Languages, Especially English, a survey of language and how it works, was published in October. This was Burgess's last non-fiction book before his death, on a subject that preoccupied him throughout his teaching and writing life.
A Dead Man In Deptford, a story about the life and death of Christopher Marlowe, was published in May. Written in Elizabethan prose, it displays Burgess's typical linguistic inventiveness, his enthusiasm for the Renaissance period, and his characteristic energy and humour. It was the last of his novels to be published in his lifetime.
Burgess died of lung cancer on 22 November in London. His ashes were interred in Monaco.
He was survived by his son Paulo Andrea (Andrew) Burgess (d.2002), and his wife Liliana (Liana) Burgess (d.2007).
