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Anthony Burgess

English writer and composer (1917–1993)

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Although Burgess was primarily a comic writer, his dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange remains his best-known novel. Burgess produced a number of other novels, including the Enderby quartet, and Earthly Powers. He wrote librettos and screenplays, including the 1977 television mini-series Jesus of Nazareth. He worked as a literary critic for several publications, including The Observer and The Guardian, and wrote studies of classic writers, notably James Joyce. A versatile linguist, Burgess lectured in phonetics, and translated Cyrano de Bergerac, Oedipus Rex, and the opera Carmen, among others. He was nominated and shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1973.

Burgess also composed over 250 musical works; he considered himself as much a composer as an author, although he achieved considerably more success in writing.

Biography

Early life

Burgess was born on 25 February 1917 at 91 Carisbrook Street in Harpurhey, a suburb of Manchester, England, to Irish Catholic parents, Joseph and Elizabeth Wilson. He described his background as lower middle class; growing up during the Great Depression, his father and stepmother who became tobacconists and owned off-licences, were fairly well off as demand for tobacco and alcohol remained constant. He was known in childhood as Jack, Little Jack, and Johnny Eagle. At his confirmation, the name Anthony was added and he became John Anthony Burgess Wilson. He began using the pen name Anthony Burgess upon the publication of his 1956 novel Time for a Tiger.

His mother Elizabeth (née Burgess) died at the age of 30 at home on 19 November 1918, during the 1918 flu pandemic. The causes listed on her death certificate were influenza, acute pneumonia, and cardiac failure. His sister Muriel had died four days earlier on 15 November from influenza, broncho-pneumonia, and cardiac failure, aged eight. Burgess believed his father, Joseph Wilson, resented his having survived, when his mother and sister did not.

After the death of his mother, Burgess was raised by his maternal aunt, Ann Bromley, in Crumpsall with her two daughters. During this time, Burgess's father worked as a bookkeeper for a beef market by day, and in the evening played piano at a public house in Miles Platting. After his father married the landlady of this pub, Margaret Dwyer, in 1922, Burgess was raised by his father and stepmother. By 1924 the couple had established a tobacconist and off-licence business with four properties. Burgess was briefly employed at the tobacconist shop as a child. On 18 April 1938, Joseph Wilson died from cardiac failure, pleurisy, and influenza at the age of 55, leaving no inheritance despite his apparent business success. Burgess's stepmother died of a heart attack in 1940.

Burgess has said of his largely solitary childhood "I was either distractedly persecuted or ignored. I was one despised. ... Ragged boys in gangs would pounce on the well-dressed like myself." Burgess attended St. Edmund's Elementary School, before moving on to Bishop Bilsborrow Memorial Elementary School, both Catholic schools, in Moss Side. He later reflected "When I went to school I was able to read. At the Manchester elementary school I attended, most of the children could not read, so I was ... a little apart, rather different from the rest." Good grades resulted in a place at a grammar school, Xaverian College, which he attended from 1928 to 1936.

Music

Burgess was indifferent to music until he heard on his home-built radio "a quite incredible flute solo", which he characterised as "sinuous, exotic, erotic", and became spellbound. Eight minutes later the announcer told him he had been listening to Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune by Claude Debussy. He referred to this as a "psychedelic moment ... a recognition of verbally inexpressible spiritual realities". When Burgess announced to his family that he wanted to be a composer, they objected as "there was no money in it". Music was not taught at his school, but at the age of about 14 he taught himself to play the piano.

University

Burgess had originally hoped to study music at university, but the music department at the Victoria University of Manchester turned down his application because of poor grades in physics. Instead, he studied English language and literature there between 1937 and 1940, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree. His thesis concerned Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, and he graduated with upper second-class honours, which he found disappointing. When grading one of Burgess's term papers, the historian A. J. P. Taylor wrote: "Bright ideas insufficient to conceal lack of knowledge."

Marriage

Burgess met Llewela "Lynne" Isherwood Jones at the university where she was studying economics, politics and modern history, graduating in 1942 with an upper second-class. Burgess and Jones were married on 22 January 1942. She was the daughter of secondary school headmaster Edward Jones and Florence (née Jones), and reportedly claimed to be a distant relative of Christopher Isherwood, although the Lewis and Biswell biographies dispute this. According to Burgess's own account, it was not from his wife that the alleged connection to Christopher Isherwood originated: "Her father was an English Jones, her mother a Welsh one. [...] Of Christopher Isherwood [...] neither the Jones father or daughter had heard. She was unliterary ..." Biswell identifies Burgess as the origin of the alleged relationship to Christopher Isherwood—"if the rumour of an Isherwood affiliation signifies anything, it is that Burgess wanted people to believe that he was connected by marriage to another famous writer"—and notes that "Llewela was not, as Burgess claims in his autobiography, a 'cousin' of the writer Christopher Isherwood"; referring to a pedigree owned by the family, Biswell observes that "Llewela's father was descended from a female Isherwood" ... "which means going back four generations ... before encountering any Isherwoods", making any connection "at best" "tenuous and distant". He also establishes that per official records, "Llewela's family name was Jones, not (as Burgess liked to suggest) 'Isherwood Jones' or 'Isherwood-Jones'."

Military service

Burgess spent six weeks in 1940 as a British Army recruit in Eskbank in Scotland before becoming a Nursing Orderly Class 3 in the Royal Army Medical Corps. During his service, he was unpopular and was involved in incidents such as knocking off a corporal's cap and polishing the floor of a corridor to make people slip. In 1941, Burgess was pursued by the Royal Military Police for desertion after overstaying his leave from Morpeth military base with his future bride Lynne. The following year he asked to be transferred to the Army Educational Corps and, despite his loathing of authority, he was promoted to sergeant. During the blackout, his pregnant wife Lynne was robbed and beaten by four American deserters; perhaps as a result, she lost the child. Burgess, stationed at the time in Gibraltar, was denied leave to see her.

At his stationing in Gibraltar, which he later wrote about in A Vision of Battlements, he worked as a training college lecturer in speech and drama, teaching alongside Ann McGlinn in German, French and Spanish. McGlinn's communist ideology would have a major influence on his later novel A Clockwork Orange. Burgess played a key role in "The British Way and Purpose" programme, designed to introduce members of the forces to the peacetime socialism of the post-war years in Britain. He was an instructor for the Central Advisory Council for Forces Education of the Ministry of Education. Burgess's flair for languages was noticed by army intelligence, and he took part in debriefings of Dutch expatriates and Free French who found refuge in Gibraltar during the war. In the neighbouring Spanish town of La Línea de la Concepción, he was arrested for insulting General Franco but released from custody shortly after the incident.

Early teaching career

Burgess left the army in 1946 with the rank of sergeant-major. For the next four years he was a lecturer in speech and drama at the Mid-West School of Education near Wolverhampton and at the Bamber Bridge Emergency Teacher Training College near Preston. Burgess taught in the extramural department of Birmingham University (1946–50).

In late 1950, he began working as a secondary school teacher at Banbury Grammar School (now Banbury School) teaching English literature. In addition to his teaching duties, he supervised sports and ran the school's drama society. He organised a number of amateur theatrical events in his spare time. These involved local people and students and included productions of T. S. Eliot's Sweeney Agonistes. Reports from his former students and colleagues indicate that he cared deeply about teaching.

With financial assistance provided by Lynne's father, the couple was able to put a down payment on a cottage in the village of Adderbury, close to Banbury. He named the cottage "Little Gidding" after one of Eliot's Four Quartets. Burgess cut his journalistic teeth in Adderbury, writing several articles for the local newspaper, the Banbury Guardian.

Malaya

In 1954, Burgess joined the British Colonial Service as a teacher and education officer in Malaya, initially stationed at Kuala Kangsar in Perak. Here he taught at the Malay College (now Malay College Kuala Kangsar – MCKK), modelled on English public school lines. In addition to his teaching duties, he was a housemaster in charge of students of the preparatory school, who were housed at a Victorian mansion known as "King's Pavilion". A variety of the music he wrote there was influenced by the country, notably Sinfoni Melayu for orchestra and brass band, which included cries of Merdeka (independence) from the audience. No score, however, is extant.

Burgess and his wife had occupied a noisy apartment where privacy was minimal, and this caused resentment. Following a dispute with the Malay College's principal about this, Burgess was reposted to the Malay Teachers' Training College at Kota Bharu, Kelantan. Burgess attained fluency in Malay, spoken and written, achieving distinction in the examinations in the language set by the Colonial Office. He was rewarded with a salary increase for his proficiency in the language.

He devoted some of his free time in Malaya to creative writing "as a sort of gentlemanly hobby, because I knew there wasn't any money in it," and published his first novels: Time for a Tiger, The Enemy in the Blanket and Beds in the East. These became known as The Malayan Trilogy and were later published in one volume as The Long Day Wanes.

Brunei

After a brief period of leave in Britain during 1958, Burgess took up a further Eastern post, this time at the Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddien College in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei. Brunei had been a British protectorate since 1888, and was not to achieve independence until 1984. In the sultanate, Burgess sketched the novel that, when it was published in 1961, was to be entitled Devil of a State and, although it dealt with Brunei, to avoid libel the action had to be transposed to an imaginary East African territory similar to Zanzibar, named Dunia. In his autobiography Little Wilson and Big God (1987), Burgess wrote:

This novel was, is, about Brunei, which was renamed Naraka, Malay-Sanskrit for "hell". Little invention was needed to contrive a large cast of unbelievable characters and a number of interwoven plots. Though completed in 1958, the work was not published until 1961, for what it was worth it was made a choice of the book society. Heinemann, my publisher, was doubtful about publishing it: it might be libellous. I had to change the setting from Brunei to an East African one. Heinemann was right to be timorous. In early 1958, The Enemy in the Blanket appeared and at once provoked a libel suit.

About this time, Burgess collapsed in a Brunei classroom while teaching history and was diagnosed as having an inoperable brain tumour. Burgess was given just a year to live, prompting him to write several novels to get money to provide for his widow. He gave a different account, however, to Jeremy Isaacs in a Face to Face interview on the BBC The Late Show (21 March 1989). He said "Looking back now I see that I was driven out of the Colonial Service. I think possibly for political reasons that were disguised as clinical reasons". He alluded to this in an interview with Don Swaim, explaining that his wife Lynne had said something "obscene" to the Duke of Edinburgh during an official visit, and the colonial authorities turned against him. He had already earned their displeasure, he told Swaim, by writing articles in the newspaper in support of the revolutionary opposition party the Parti Rakyat Brunei, and for his friendship with its leader Dr. Azahari. Burgess's biographers attribute the incident to the author's notorious mythomania. Geoffrey Grigson writes:

He was, however, suffering from the effects of prolonged heavy drinking (and associated poor nutrition), of the often oppressive south-east Asian climate, of chronic constipation, and of overwork and professional disappointment. As he put it, the scions of the sultans and of the élite in Brunei "did not wish to be taught", because the free-flowing abundance of oil guaranteed their income and privileged status. He may also have wished for a pretext to abandon teaching and get going full-time as a writer, having made a late start.

Repatriate years

Burgess was invalided home in 1959 and relieved of his position in Brunei. He spent some time in the neurological ward of a London hospital (see The Doctor is Sick) where he underwent cerebral tests that found no illness. On discharge, benefiting from a sum of money which Lynne Burgess had inherited from her father, together with their savings built up over six years in the East, he decided to become a full-time writer. The couple lived first in an apartment in Hove, near Brighton. They later moved to a semi-detached house called "Applegarth" in Etchingham, about four miles from Bateman's where Rudyard Kipling had lived in Burwash, and one mile from the Robertsbridge home of Malcolm Muggeridge. Upon the death of Burgess's father-in-law, the couple used their inheritance to decamp to a terraced town house in Chiswick. This provided convenient access to the BBC Television Centre where he later became a frequent guest. During these years Burgess became a regular drinking partner of the novelist William S. Burroughs. Their meetings took place in London and Tangiers.

A sea voyage the couple took with the Baltic Line from Tilbury to Leningrad in June 1961 resulted in the novel Honey for the Bears. He wrote in his autobiographical You've Had Your Time (1990), that in re-learning Russian at this time, he found inspiration for the Russian-based slang Nadsat that he created for A Clockwork Orange, going on to note, "I would resist to the limit any publisher's demand that a glossary be provided."

Liana Macellari, an Italian translator twelve years younger than Burgess, came across his novels Inside Mr. Enderby and A Clockwork Orange, while writing about English fiction. The two first met in 1963 over lunch in Chiswick and began an affair. In 1964, Liana gave birth to Burgess's son, Paolo Andrea. The affair was hidden from Burgess's alcoholic wife, whom he refused to leave for fear of offending his cousin (by Burgess's stepmother, Margaret Dwyer Wilson), George Dwyer, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Leeds.

Lynne Burgess died from cirrhosis of the liver, on 20 March 1968. Six months later, in September 1968, Burgess married Liana, acknowledging her four-year-old boy as his own, although the birth certificate listed Roy Halliday, Liana's former partner, as the father. Paolo Andrea (also known as Andrew Burgess Wilson) died in London in 2002, aged 37. Liana died in 2007.

Tax exile

Burgess was a Conservative (though, as he clarified in an interview with The Paris Review, his political views could be considered "a kind of anarchism", since his ideal of a "Catholic Jacobite imperial monarch" was not practicable). He was also a lapsed Catholic and a monarchist, harbouring a distaste for all republics. He believed socialism for the most part was "ridiculous" but did "concede that socialised medicine is a priority in any civilised country today". To avoid the 90% tax the family would have incurred because of their high income, they left Britain and toured Europe in a Bedford Dormobile motor-home.

During their travels through France and across the Alps, Burgess wrote in the back of the van as Liana drove. In this period, he wrote novels and produced film scripts for Lew Grade and Franco Zeffirelli. His first place of residence after leaving England was Lija, Malta (1968–1970). The negative reaction from a lecture that Burgess delivered to an audience of Catholic priests in Malta precipitated a move by the couple to Italy after the Maltese government confiscated the property. (He would go on to fictionalise these events in Earthly Powers a decade later.) The Burgesses maintained a flat in Rome, a country house in Bracciano, and a property in Montalbuccio. On hearing rumours of a mafia plot to kidnap Paolo Andrea while the family was staying in Rome, Burgess decided to move to Monaco in 1975. Burgess was also motivated to move to the tax haven of Monaco, as the country did not levy income tax, and widows were exempt from death duties, a form of taxation on their husband's estates. The couple also had a villa in France, at Callian, Var, Provence.

Burgess lived for a number of years in the United States, working as writer-in-residence at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1969, as a visiting professor at Princeton University with the creative writing program in 1970, and as a distinguished professor at the City College of New York in 1972. At City College he was a close colleague and friend of Joseph Heller. He went on to teach creative writing at Columbia University, lectured on the novel at the University of Iowa in 1975, and at the University at Buffalo in 1976. Eventually he settled in Monaco in 1976, where he was active in the local community, becoming a co-founder of the Princess Grace Irish Library, a centre for Irish cultural studies, in 1984.

In May 1988, Burgess made an extended appearance with, among others, Andrea Dworkin on the episode What Is Sex For? of the discussion programme After Dark. He spoke at one point about divorce:

Liking involves no discipline; love does ... A marriage, say that lasts twenty years or more, is a kind of civilisation, a kind of microcosm – it develops its own language, its own semiotics, its own slang, its own shorthand ... sex is part of it, part of the semiotics. To destroy, wantonly, such a relationship, is like destroying a whole civilisation.

Although Burgess lived not far from Graham Greene, whose house was in Antibes, Greene became aggrieved shortly before his death by comments in newspaper articles by Burgess and broke off all contact. Gore Vidal revealed in his 2006 memoir Point to Point Navigation that Greene disapproved of Burgess's appearance on various European television stations to discuss his (Burgess's) books. Vidal recounts that Greene apparently regarded a willingness to appear on television as something that ought to be beneath a writer's dignity. "He talks about his books," Vidal quotes an exasperated Greene as saying. During this time, Burgess spent much time at his chalet 2 km (1.2 mi) outside Lugano, Switzerland.

Death

Although Burgess wrote that he expected to "die somewhere in the Mediterranean lands, with an inaccurate obituary in the Nice-Matin, unmourned, soon forgotten", he returned to die in Twickenham, an outer suburb of London, where he owned a house. Burgess died on 22 November 1993 from lung cancer, at the Hospital of St John & St Elizabeth in London. His ashes were inurned at the Monaco Cemetery.

The epitaph on Burgess's marble memorial stone, reads: "Abba Abba", which means "Father, father" in Aramaic, Arabic, Hebrew, and other Semitic languages and is pronounced by Christ during his agony in Gethsemane (Mark 14:36) as he prays God to spare him. It is also the title of Burgess's 22nd novel, concerning the death of John Keats. The Times obituary heralded the author as "a great moralist". His estate was worth US$3 million and included a large European property portfolio of houses and apartments.

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