Nobody knows more about Peake than @profrmaslen.bsky.social. This is an exemplary podcast on Gormenghast etc. For all your Gothic-Christmas listening pleasure!

In our final newsletter of 2025, we’re celebrating 30 years of Anthony Burgess’s last novel, Byrne. We’ll be back in the new year. Subscribe for FREE: anthonyburgessfoundation.substack.com/p/the-last-w...

Anthony Burgess wrote an introduction to Titus Groan, which is still in the current UK paperback. We also made a podcast episode about Burgess and Peake right here: www.anthonyburgess.org/podcasts/nin...

Everybody knows the best memoirists are merely nominated for the Booker, right? *saunters off, whistling conspicuously*

Anthony Burgess on Shaw: After cataloging the man's many flaws and follies, he wrote, "But none of this could prevent his being a great dramatist, perhaps second only to Shakespeare."

A noble endeavour!

MANCHESTER MITCH BENN brings his electrifying one man version of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol to the International Anthony Burgess Centre on THURSDAY (18th) NB TWO shows (6pm & 8pm) #AChristmasCarol #ChristmasReels #Dickens #TheatreReels #ViralReels #Storytelling #ChristmasinManchester

The post below reminds me it's the right time of year to re-up my own piece on Anthony Burgess's view of Christmas as "an approach to life that might – had history gone differently – have been as viable as the one to which we’re committed". By way of Dickens, Chesterton, and post-Brexit politics:

On this week’s newsletter we’re preparing for the Christmas festivities with a look at Anthony Burgess’s (author of A Clockwork Orange) enjoyment of the seasonal banquet. Subscribe for FREE for weekly posts: anthonyburgessfoundation.substack.com/p/christmas-...

On this week’s newsletter we’re preparing for the Christmas festivities with a look at Anthony Burgess’s (author of A Clockwork Orange) enjoyment of the seasonal banquet. Subscribe for FREE for weekly posts: anthonyburgessfoundation.substack.com/p/christmas-...

🪖 NEW NINETY-NINE NOVELS EPISODE 🪖 It’s the final episode of the series and we’re exploring THE ANTI-DEATH LEAGUE by KINGSLEY AMIS, a novel Anthony Burgess calls ‘a noble cry from the heart on behalf of human suffering.’ Find at all pod-apps and here: www.anthonyburgess.org/blog-posts/n...

Vanilla caramel, a classic flavour, with the oldest pop linguistics book I own, a used copy of Language Made Plain by Anthony Burgess (yes, the Clockwork Orange guy also wrote an intro to linguistics - the penciled flyleaf reminds me I bought it used for 50¢, in high school) #BooksAreMyJam day 9

🪖 NEW NINETY-NINE NOVELS EPISODE 🪖 It’s the final episode of the series and we’re exploring THE ANTI-DEATH LEAGUE by KINGSLEY AMIS, a novel Anthony Burgess calls ‘a noble cry from the heart on behalf of human suffering.’ Find at all pod-apps and here: www.anthonyburgess.org/blog-posts/n...

On this week’s newsletter we’re celebrating the 250th birthday of Jane Austen with a piece by Anthony Burgess himself. Find out why he thinks she is ‘formidable’. Subscribe for FREE for weekly posts: anthonyburgessfoundation.substack.com/p/the-formid...

It's true! Here's Burgess doing 'The Burial of the Dead'. He had an extraordinary memory for poetry. We also have a tape of him reciting all of GM Hopkins's The Wreck of the Deutschland. Someone who was there when it was recorded says he reeled it off from memory. www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRfg...

We have a winner! @marbleicehook.bsky.social correctly answered that the composer most associated with A Clockwork Orange is Anthony Burgess himself. A new volume of his piano works has just been released to buy and stream. Honourable mention to @rmhayes.bsky.social who was pipped by 3 minutes.

This quiz question about A Clockwork Orange appeared in The Australian newspaper. There is the obvious answer and the more esoteric answer. We are sure that The Australian doesn't have both, but can you name them? We'll give the answer later on, Bragging rights for anyone who gets there before us!

This quiz question about A Clockwork Orange appeared in The Australian newspaper. There is the obvious answer and the more esoteric answer. We are sure that The Australian doesn't have both, but can you name them? We'll give the answer later on, Bragging rights for anyone who gets there before us!

🐅 NEW NINETY-NINE NOVELS EPISODE 🐅 This week, a dystopian vision of a fascist Britain in THE OLD MEN AT THE ZOO by ANGUS WILSON. Writer and academic Marina MacKay guides us through the horrors. Find wherever you get your podcasts and here: www.anthonyburgess.org/blog-posts/n...

🐅 NEW NINETY-NINE NOVELS EPISODE 🐅 This week, a dystopian vision of a fascist Britain in THE OLD MEN AT THE ZOO by ANGUS WILSON. Writer and academic Marina MacKay guides us through the horrors. Find wherever you get your podcasts and here: www.anthonyburgess.org/blog-posts/n...

Earlier in this series of Ninety-Nine Novels, we spoke to @clarachambara.bsky.social about R.K. Narayan's The Vendor of Sweets. Claire has written a blog about the novel that expands on some of her thoughts. Very much worth reading for fans of Narayan/S. Asian lit: 3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily...

On this week's newsletter, Anthony Burgess writes about the operatic works of Benjamin Britten, focussing on the seafaring Billy Budd. Subscribe for FREE for weekly posts by and about Anthony Burgess (author of A Clockwork Orange) and more: anthonyburgessfoundation.substack.com/p/the-smell-...

🍆 NEW NINETY-NINE NOVELS EPISODE🍆 This week, the thorny issue of PORTNOY’S COMPLAINT by PHILIP ROTH. Is the novel more than its reputation? Is it really just about onanism? Roth expert Matthew Shipe helps us find out. All the usual places and here: www.anthonyburgess.org/blog-posts/n...

🍆 NEW NINETY-NINE NOVELS EPISODE🍆 This week, the thorny issue of PORTNOY’S COMPLAINT by PHILIP ROTH. Is the novel more than its reputation? Is it really just about onanism? Roth expert Matthew Shipe helps us find out. All the usual places and here: www.anthonyburgess.org/blog-posts/n...

A writer on a chat show?! ‘Not in a million years,’ you might say, but this week’s newsletter explores Anthony Burgess’s adventures in the world of light entertainment. The past is truly a different country. Subscribe for FREE for weekly posts: anthonyburgessfoundation.substack.com/p/chatty-man

A writer on a chat show?! ‘Not in a million years,’ you might say, but this week’s newsletter explores Anthony Burgess’s adventures in the world of light entertainment. The past is truly a different country. Subscribe for FREE for weekly posts: anthonyburgessfoundation.substack.com/p/chatty-man

The International Anthony Burgess Foundation has a new episode in their excellent "Ninety-Nine Novels" podcast featuring me talking about Riddley Walker. You can listen here: anthonyburgess.org/blog-posts/n... @mcfarland.bsky.social @russellhoban.bsky.social @anthonyburgess.bsky.social

⚙️NEW NINETY-NINE NOVELS EPISODE⚙️ A dystopian vision of the future, a young boy in a violent world, a made-up language. No, not A Clockwork Orange, but RIDDLEY WALKER by RUSSELL HOBAN. At all the usual places and here: www.anthonyburgess.org/blog-posts/n...

[Happy 86th birthday to solar eclipse photographer and composer Wendy Carlos, known for "Switched-On Bach," A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, THE SHINING, TRON, and “Peter and the Wolf” with Weird Al Yankovic. Listen to “Switched-On Bach” below.] archive.org/details/wend...

⚙️NEW NINETY-NINE NOVELS EPISODE⚙️ A dystopian vision of the future, a young boy in a violent world, a made-up language. No, not A Clockwork Orange, but RIDDLEY WALKER by RUSSELL HOBAN. At all the usual places and here: www.anthonyburgess.org/blog-posts/n...

Anthony Burgess was a fan of Rushdie's writing. When all the furore over The Satanic Verses happened, Burgess wrote Rushdie a letter of support -- in typical Burgess fashion, it was a lengthy poem in the style of Alexander Pope's 'Essay on Man' and railed against literary censorship.

Luckily, Blooms of Dublin has just been republished alongside Burgess's newly-discovered abridged version of Ulysses: uk.bookshop.org/a/15106/9781...

Anthony Burgess on Terry Wogan makes you realize what a talent we lost: he said the English don't appreciate their writers, they have to give their language away to foreigners: Joyce had to leave Ireland to write the truth of Dublin. He said he's lived abroad so long, English is like a foreign

It took some very intense zoom meetings and messy pub meet-ups for the three of us to map all the complex plot points of this trilogy out and get it all to make sense and I have to confess there were some pretty fucking heated arguments along the way but I think we made it all work well in the end.

Actually, intrigued by this story, I once read "Les Oliviers de la Justice" alongside Burgess's translation to see how, and indeed if, he had gorblimeyed it up: anthonyburgessblog.blogspot.com/2015/03/jean...

I like the way Anthony Burgess uses "gorblimey" as a verb, here, and would like to see it more widely used.

Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess. Elderly gay writer is asked by a bishop to write a biography of his late brother in law who was the pope. This is a poor description of what it is about, but it changed how I think about a lot of things: Good and evil, faith, the world and our place in it.

Anthony Burgess. Now there's a writer who could do a fire scene. I felt my fingertips getting scorched from holding the pages.

🌅NEW NINETY-NINE NOVELS EPISODE🌅 The heaven of MICHAEL FRAYN’s SWEET DREAMS awaits us all: a glass city in which we take up middle-class bureaucratic jobs. A satirical novel that Anthony Burgess calls ‘deceptively tough’. At all the usual places and here: www.anthonyburgess.org/blog-posts/n...

🌅NEW NINETY-NINE NOVELS EPISODE🌅 The heaven of MICHAEL FRAYN’s SWEET DREAMS awaits us all: a glass city in which we take up middle-class bureaucratic jobs. A satirical novel that Anthony Burgess calls ‘deceptively tough’. At all the usual places and here: www.anthonyburgess.org/blog-posts/n...

The Anthony Burgess Foundation: home of "absolute bangers" and I don't think we're talking sausages. Thanks Martin!

The final two months of 2025 are chock-a-block with events at the Burgess Foundation. This week's newsletter gives you the lowdown, including a rare chance to hear Anthony Burgess's compositions played on his own piano. All the listings: anthonyburgessfoundation.substack.com/p/winter-202...

The Observer Anthony Burgess Prize for Arts Journalism 2026 is now open for entries. Are you trying to make your name in arts journalism? Write a review of any new work in the arts for your chance to win £3000 and publication in the Observer. Enter now: www.anthonyburgess.org/observeranth...

The Observer Anthony Burgess Prize for Arts Journalism 2026 is now open for entries. Are you trying to make your name in arts journalism? Write a review of any new work in the arts for your chance to win £3000 and publication in the Observer. Enter now: www.anthonyburgess.org/observeranth...

⚔️NEW NINETY-NINE NOVELS EPISODE⚔️ This week: THE COUP by JOHN UPDIKE, in which an African dictator documents his fall from power. Andrew Biswell is led through the political intrigue by writer and critic Bob Batchelor. At all pod-apps or here: www.anthonyburgess.org/blog-posts/n...

⚔️NEW NINETY-NINE NOVELS EPISODE⚔️ This week: THE COUP by JOHN UPDIKE, in which an African dictator documents his fall from power. Andrew Biswell is led through the political intrigue by writer and critic Bob Batchelor. At all pod-apps or here: www.anthonyburgess.org/blog-posts/n...

Now is the time to purchase Anthony Burgess's books of essays from our friends at Carcanet! Perfect Christmas presents for anyone into twentieth century literature and music, opinionated literary reviews, or even just Manchester folk made good...

🎃Happy Halloween!🎃 Here's Anthony Burgess giving a spooky reading of Edgar Allan Poe's poem The Bells. Bells. BEEEEELLLLLLSSSS!!!!!!! www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_wm...

On this week’s newsletter, we’re following the money. Find out what the expense accounts of Anthony Burgess (author of A Clockwork Orange) tell us about his life. Subscribe for FREE for weekly posts like this: anthonyburgessfoundation.substack.com/p/the-price-...

It was rather novel for me a few months ago to be asked to talk about a novel – "The French Lieutenant's Woman" by John Fowles, which Anthony Burgess chose as one of the best novels in English since 1939. Here is a link to the podcast. www.anthonyburgess.org/blog-posts/n...