Anthony Burgess. An Introduction

Anthony Burgess, best known for his novels, particularly A Clockwork Orange, is also remembered as a composer, a biographer and critic, and occasional TV personality. The novels were products of later life; five being written in the space of twelve months when he was diagnosed as terminally ill with a brain tumour. He lived on, however, for another thirty three years – filled with a passionate intensity – and continued to produce works at almost the same rate. He wrote scripts for radio and television and the cinema as well as a number of musical compositions.

Before he finally settled on the pen name Anthony Burgess he also wrote under his full name John Burgess Wilson as well as the pseudonym Joseph Kell – the name which appears on the original Mr Enderby book Inside Mr. Enderby (1963). His novel The Wanting Seed (1962) gained him attention and it was quickly followed by his most famous and controversial book, the novella A Clockwork Orange (1962) which was to be filmed in 1971 by Stanley Kubrick. Both book and film were widely condemned for their violence and sexual content: to the extent that Kubrick withdrew the film from circulation. Burgess said he loathed the film anyway.

The years 1962/1963 were something of a watershed in British social history and Burgess hit the mood of the time. There was a backdrop of incipient violence during the Cold War. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 threatened nuclear war between the USA and the USSR. President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 by a man who had lived in the Soviet Union and was married to a Russian. (Lee Harvey Oswald had lived and worked in Minsk, capital city of present day Byelorus). In London, John Profumo, Minister of Defence, was found to be sharing a mistress with the Soviet Naval Attach