The International Anthony Burgess Foundation Podcast

In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.

In this episode, Andrew Biswell heads back to the era of the Bright Young Things to examine Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited with writer, academic and editor Barbara Cooke.

Brideshead Revisited is perhaps Evelyn Waugh’s most famous novel. It follows Ryder as he remembers his life, from his undergraduate years at the University of Oxford in the golden age before the Second World War, to his wartime enlistment in the army. His life is coloured by his obsession with the Flytes, an aristocratic Catholic family who live in the stately home of Brideshead. In Ninety-Nine Novels, Burgess writes, ‘I have read Brideshead Revisited at least a dozen times and have never failed to be charmed and moved, even to tears.’

Evelyn Waugh was born in 1903. At the age of 24, he published his first book, a biography of the artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and the following year he published his first novel, Decline and Fall. Sixteen more novels followed, including A Handful of Dust, Scoop and Vile Bodies. His last novels were the Sword of Honour trilogy, which were published in 1965. He died in 1966.

Barbara Cooke is a Senior Lecturer in English at Loughborough University. She is also Co-Executive Editor of the Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh, published by Oxford University Press, a series which brings together all of Waugh’s published and previously unpublished writing with comprehensive introductions, contextual writing and annotations. She is the author of Evelyn Waugh’s Oxford, published by The Bodleian Library, and has recently written the introduction to Penguin’s new edition of Decline and Fall.

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BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

By Evelyn Waugh:

Decline and Fall (1928)

Vile Bodies (1930)

A Handful of Dust (1934)

Helena (1950)

The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold (1957)

A Little Learning (1957)

By others:

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1865)

Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers (1935)

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (1948)

Crooked House by Agatha Christie (1949)

A Grain of Wheat by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1967)

Ruling Passions by Tom Driberg (1977)

Evelyn Waugh (Two Volumes: The Early Years 1903-1939 and The Later Years 1939-1966) by Martin Stannard (1989-94)

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LINKS

Evelyn Waugh's Oxford by Barbara Cooke (affiliate link)

The Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh at Oxford University Press

International Anthony Burgess Foundation

The theme music is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, and is performed by No Dice Collective.

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In this episode, Graham Foster talks to one of the 2023 Liana Burgess Fellows, Dr Mária Palla, who has spent three weeks researching in the archives at the Burgess Foundation.

In its capacity as an educational charity, the Burgess Foundation offers grants to researchers and scholars with an interest in the life and work of Anthony Burgess and other connected subjects such as twentieth century literature and musical composition. The Liana Burgess Fellowship helps international researchers to visit the archives at the Burgess Foundation. It is named after Burgess’s wife, who set up the Foundation in 2003 and was instrumental in preserving his personal papers and possessions, all of which is available to researchers at our facilities in Manchester.

Dr Mária Palla is an assistant professor in the Institute of English and America Studies at Pázmány Péter Catholic University in Budapest, Hungary. Her research focuses on contemporary literatures in English, which she examines using the tools of post-colonial criticism. She has published widely on Canadian literature, focussing on representations of the diasporic experiences of immigrants to the country. She is currently working on Anthony Burgess’s Malayan novels.

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LINKS:

Mária Palla at Pázmány Péter Catholic University

International Anthony Burgess Foundation

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In this episode, Graham Foster to one of the 2023 Liana Burgess Fellows, Dr Ákos Farkas, who has spent three weeks researching in the archives at the Burgess Foundation.

In its capacity as an educational charity, the Burgess Foundation offers grants to researchers and scholars with an interest in the life and work of Anthony Burgess and other connected subjects such as twentieth century literature and musical composition. The Liana Burgess Fellowship helps international researchers to visit the archives at the Burgess Foundation. It is named after Burgess’s wife, who set up the Foundation in 2003 and was instrumental in preserving his personal papers and possessions, all of which is available to researchers at our facilities in Manchester.

Dr Ákos Farkas is Associate Professor of English at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary. His research interests lie in twentieth century English, American and Irish literature, in particular, the Catholic novel, modernism and the postmodern and utopian and dystopian literature. As a translator and editor, he has helped bring Burgess’s Enderby sequence into Hungarian, and has translated the works of authors such as Cecilia Ahern, Geroge McDonald Fraser, Tibor Fischer and George Orwell. He is also the volume editor for the Irwell Edition of Anthony Burgess’s The Clockwork Testament, available now from Manchester University Press.

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LINKS:

Ákos Farkas at Eötvös Loránd University

The Irwell Edition of the Works of Anthony Burgess at Manchester University Press

International Anthony Burgess Foundation

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In this episode, Andrew Biswell explores Anthony Burgess’s adventures in America with the help of Christopher W. Thurley.

Burgess first visited America in 1966, when he was 49, but over the course of his career he gained extensive experience of both living and working in the United States. These experiences influenced some of his most important work, including Earthly Powers, and he analysed American culture extensively in his journalism and non-fiction.

Christopher W Thurley is an English faculty member at Gaston College in Dallas, North Carolina. He earned his doctorate, which focussed on the life and work of Anthony Burgess, from Manchester Metropolitan University. His monograph, Anthony Burgess and America, is forthcoming from Manchester University Press.

Click here for more information about Anthony Burgess and to find out how you can support the work of the Burgess Foundation.

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In this episode, Andrew Biswell, Director of the Burgess Foundation, investigates Anthony Burgess's Chatsky, to celebrate the very first publication of the play by Salamander Street. Chatsky is translated from Alexander Griboyedov's nineteenth century play Gore ot uma, or Woe Out of Wit.

Chatsky tells the story of a young Russian diplomat who returns from a foreign posting to Moscow, where he hopes to rekindle his love affair with his childhood sweetheart ,Sophie, but she is being pursued by Molchalin, and the Moscow elite have grown suspicious of Chatsky's worldly intelligence. Burgess's exuberant translation maintains the original's rhyming form, but, like his earlier translation of Cyrano de Bergerac, the wordy and witty results are quintessentially Burgessian.

To shed light on the play, Andrew Biswell speaks to Anna Aslanyan, expert in Russian literature, about Griboyedov's original, and how Burgess's translation captures its essence. He also chats to Jonathan Cullen, who played Molchalin in the original production of Chatsky at the Almeida, London, in March 1993. Here's more about our guests in this episode:

Anna Aslanyan is a journalist, translator and public service interpreter. As a journalist she has contributed to the Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian and other UK publications, writing about books and arts. Her translations from Russian include contemporary short stories for Dalkey Archive’s collection Best European Fiction and Egor Kovalevsky’s 19th century travelogue A Journey to Africa. Her popular history of translation Dancing on Ropes: Translators and the Balance of History is out now.

Jonathan Cullen has been an actor for stage and screen for nearly 40 years. On stage, he has performed lead roles with the National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company and on the West End as well as renowned theatres around the UK. He has appeared in films such as Velvet Goldmine, Finding Neverland and Suffragette, and on television he played King George VI in the BBC’s adaptation of Len Deighton’s SS-GB, and the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Channel 4 comedy The Windsors. He is currently based in Portland, Oregon.

Extracts from Chatsky are read by Paul Barnhill who is an actor, puppeteer and the creative director of the theatre company Goofus.

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LINKS

Two Plays: Chatsky and Miser, Miser by Anthony Burgess at Salamander Street

Dancing on Ropes: Translators and the Balance of History by Anna Aslanyan at Blackwells (affiliate link)

Jonathan Cullen's Website

Goofus Theatre Company

International Anthony Burgess Foundation

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Andrew Biswell speaks to writer and journalist Andy Spinoza about his new book, Manchester Unspun, a post-industrial cultural history of Anthony Burgess's hometown.

Andy Spinoza moved from London to Manchester at the age of eighteen and has remained in the city ever since. He wrote about the city’s music scene for the NME and The Face and he founded the alternative magazine City Life in 1983, which charted the city’s cultural life for over twenty years, and helped launch the careers of Mark Kermode, Jon Ronson and Melvin Burgess among others. Andy also worked as a gossip columnist for Manchester Evening News for ten years, during which time he met Anthony Burgess several times.

LINKS:

Manchester Unspun by Andy Spinoza at Manchester University Press

Andy Spinoza on Twitter

International Anthony Burgess Foundation

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Anthony Burgess was one of the most important and prolific British writers of the twentieth century. Most famous for his dystopian vision A Clockwork Orange, he wrote 33 novels, 25 books of non-fiction and over 250 musical compositions. This podcast aims to illuminate Burgess’s life and work, and his connections to other twentieth century literature, film and music. So join us as we explore the world of Anthony Burgess.

In this episode, Andrew Biswell talks to the poet Peter Bakowski about his virtual residency at the Burgess Foundation and the poems inspired by his research into Anthony Burgess.

Peter Bakowski is our first Virtual Writer in Residence and joined us through a collaborative project with Manchester UNESCO City of Literature. Peter is an award-winning Australian poet, whose work has an international influence. Having travelled widely in Europe, North America, Africa and Asia, his work has been set in many countries around the world, and been published in languages such as Arabic, Japanese, Bengali and Mandarin. 2022 marks his 40th year of writing poetry.

Peter’s latest collection of poetry are Our Ways on Earth, published by Recent Work Press, and Nearly Lunch, published by Wakefield Press and written in collaboration with the Adelaide poet Ken Bolton.

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LINKS:

Our Ways on Earth by Peter Bakowski

Nearly Lunch by Peter Bakowski and Ken Bolton

Manchester UNESCO City of Literature

International Anthony Burgess Foundation

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In this episode, Will Carr celebrates the release of the Irwell Edition of Anthony Burgess's Mozart and the Wolf Gang with Christine Lee Gengaro, Professor of Music at Los Angeles City College.

The Irwell Edition of the Works of Anthony Burgess is one of the central projects of the Burgess Foundation, and aims to publish each of Burgess’s novels and major works of non-fiction in critical editions edited by experts and scholars. Each edition has a new introduction, a text which has been restored to that of the first edition, appendices drawn from the Burgess Archives around the world, and expansive notes on the text. Mozart and the Wolf Gang is a strange novella. It was written to commemorate the bicentenary of Mozart, and combines fiction, opera libretto, and fragments of film script among other things which work together to be a deliberation on the nature of music.

The Irwell Edition of Mozart and the Wolf Gang was edited by Alan Shockley, and was one of his final projects before he died in 2020. Alan was Professor of Music at California State University, Long Beach, and as a composer, he thoughtful and challenging work was admired by audiences all over the world.

Mozart and the Wolf Gang is out now!

Find out more about the Irwell Edition of the Works of Anthony Burgess at Manchester University Press.

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LINKS:

A Memorial for Alan Shockley at California State University, Long Beach

Music in the Words: Musical Form and Counterpoint in the Twentieth Century Novel by Alan Shockley

Gender, Power and Identity in the Films of Stanley Kubrick [containing 'Music and Misogyny in A Clockwork Orange' by Christine Lee Gengaro]

Anthony Burgess, Stanley Kubrick and A Clockwork Orange [containing 'Transforming Variations: Music in the Novel, Film, and Play, A Clockwork Orange' by Christine Lee Gengaro]

International Anthony Burgess Foundation

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In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.

This is the final episode of Series Two, and our guest Elizabeth Elliott is helping us explore Camelot in The Once and Future King by T.H. White. Published in 1958, The Once and Future King adapts the famous stories of King Arthur and his Round Table. Beginning with the childhood of Arthur in the first book, The Sword in the Stone, White’s version of the familiar stories are complex examinations of leadership, nobility, romance and war. Of White’s novel, Burgess writes, ‘This is not remote and fabulous history: the lesson of the breaking of the Round Table is for our time.’

T.H. White was born in Bombay, India in 1906. Although The Once and Future King is his most famous novel, he was a prolific writer, with 20 other books to his name. In 1951, he published The Goshawk, which details his attempts to train his hawk using the falconry methods of the Middle Ages. He died in 1964 in Greece, during the return journey from a lecture tour of the United States.

Elizabeth Elliott is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Aberdeen. She specialises in medieval and early modern literature and the afterlives of medieval texts in later literature. Her latest article ‘Restorying Arthurian Legend: Space, Place and Time in Once & Future and Legendborn’ was published in the Journal of the International Arthurian Society in 2022. Her book Remembering Boethius: Writing Aristocratic Identity in Later Medieval French and English Literatures is published by Routledge.

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BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

The Arthurian Romances by Chrétien de Troyes (c. 1170-90)

The Prose Lancelot by Anonymous, including the Queste del Saint Graal (c. 1210-1235)

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by Anonymous (c. 1400)

Le Morte D'Arthur by Thomas Malory (1485)

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain (1889)

The Harry Potter Series (1997-2007)

The Magicians by Lev Grossman (2009)

H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald (2014)

Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi (2018)

Once & Future by A.R. Capetta and Cory McCarthy (2019)

Legendborn by Tracy Deonn (2020)

Sword, Stone, Table ed. by Swapna Krishna and Jenny Northington (2021)

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LINKS

Elizabeth Elliott at the University of Aberdeen

Elizabeth Elliott on Twitter

International Anthony Burgess Foundation

The theme music is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, and is performed by No Dice Collective. 

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If you have enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to leave us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.

In this episode, the Burgess Foundation's Graham Foster is joined by writer and academic Tim Kendall to talk about The Spire by William Golding. Published in 1964, The Spire tells the story of Jocelin, the dean of a medieval cathedral. He believes he has been tasked by God to build the tallest spire in England, but its construction is plagued by problems, just as Jocelin is plagued by visions both heavenly and otherwise.

William Golding was born in Cornwall in 1911. After becoming a schoolteacher in Salisbury in the 1930s, he was drafted into the Royal Navy for his wartime service, during which he participated in the Normandy Landings on D-Day. He began writing in the 1950s, and published his first novel Lord of the Flies in 1954. He won the Booker Prize in 1980 for Rites of Passage, beating Anthony Burgess’s Earthly Powers. He died in 1993 aged 81.

Tim Kendall is Professor of English at the University of Exeter. He is currently preparing the correspondence between William Golding and his editor Charles Monteith for publication by Faber & Faber. His next book, co-authored with Fiona Mathews, is Black Ops and Beaver-Bombing, an exploration of Britain’s wild mammals and is forthcoming from Oneworld in spring 2023.

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BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

By William Golding:

Lord of the Flies (1954)

The Inheritors (1955)

Pincher Martin (1956)

Free Fall (1959)

To the Ends of the Earth, consisting of: Rites of Passage (1980); Close Quarters (1987); Fire Down Below (1989)

By others:

The Coral Island by R.M. Ballantyne (1857)

The Master Builder by Henrik Ibsen (1892)

'The Eye of Allah' in Debits and Credits by Rudyard Kipling (1926)

Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce (1958)

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (1962)

Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban (1980)

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie (1981)

Northern Lights by Philip Pullman (1995)

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (2020)

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LINKS

Black Ops and Beaver-Bombing by Tim Kendall and Fiona Mathews (Pre-Order)

Official William Golding Website

The relationship between William Golding and Susanna Clarke by Arabella Currie

International Anthony Burgess Foundation

The theme music is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, and is performed by No Dice Collective.

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If you have enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to leave us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.

In this episode, Andrew Biswell of the Burgess Foundation talks to biographer Mary V Dearborn about two novels by Ernest Hemingway: For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea.

Published in 1940, For Whom the Bell Tolls is Hemingway’s fictional examination of the Spanish Civil War. The story deals with an American who joins a group of anti-fascist guerrillas in Spain and plots to destroy a bridge to stop the advance of the enemy. The Old Man and the Sea was the last major work of fiction published in Hemingway’s life. It arrived in 1952, and tells the story of an old Cuban fisherman who chases down a great marlin and struggles to bring it in to shore.

Ernest Hemingway was born in Illinois in 1899. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American authors of the twentieth century. His debut novel The Sun Also Rises was published in 1926 and he went on to publish five more in his lifetime, along with six volumes of short stories and two books of non-fiction. There have been several posthumous publications. Hemingway died by suicide in 1961.

Mary V Dearborn is a biographer and has written books on subjects such as Peggy Guggenheim, Norman Mailer, Louise Bryant and Henry Miller. Her biography of Ernest Hemingway was published in 2017.

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BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST

By Ernest Hemingway:

The Sun Also Rises (1926)

A Farewell to Arms (1929)

Death in the Afternoon (1932)

The Green Hills of Africa (1935)

Across the River and into the Trees (1950)

A Moveable Feast (1964)

Islands in the Stream (1970)

The Garden of Eden (1986)

The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (1987)

By others:

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)

Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1934)

Papa Hemingway by AE Hotchner (1966)

Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story by Carlos Baker (1969)

A Reader's Guide to Ernest Hemingway by Arthur Waldhorn (1975)

Ernest Hemingway and His World by Anthony Burgess (1978)

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain (2011)

Mrs Hemingway by Naomi Wood (2014)

The Letters of Ernest Hemingway Vols I-V (2011-2020, ongoing)

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LINKS

Mary V Dearborn's website

Ernest Hemingway: A Biography by Mary V Dearborn

International Anthony Burgess Foundation

The theme music is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, and is performed by No Dice Collective.

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If you have enjoyed this episode, why not leave us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.

In this episode, Will Carr of the Burgess Foundation talks to Rob Mallows, creator of the Deighton Dossier website, about Len Deighton’s Bomber, which follows the disparate characters caught up in an Allied bombing raid on Western Germany during World War II. Published in 1970, the story is told from many different points of view, including both British and German flight crews, and follows the assault, from its preparations to its ultimately tragic conclusion.

Len Deighton was born in 1929, and is perhaps most famous for his novel The IPCRESS File, which was turned into a film starring Micheal Caine in 1965. He is still writing at the age of 93.

Rob Mallows is the creator and curator of the Deighton Dossier, the internet’s only comprehensive resource about the life and works of Len Deighton.

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BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

By Len Deighton:

The IPCRESS File (1962)

Funeral in Berlin (1964)

London Dossier (1967)

Fighter: The True Story of the Battle of Britain (1977)

SS-GB (1978)

Berlin Game (1983)

Mexico Set (1984)

London Match (1985)

By others:

The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell (2006)

Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing by Matthew G. Kirschenbaum (2016)

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LINKS

The Deighton Dossier

The Deighton Dossier Blog

The Deighton Dossier Facebook Group

The Deighton Dossier on Twitter

International Anthony Burgess Foundation

The theme music is Anthony Burgess's Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor. It is performed by No Dice Collective.

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You can join the conversation and tell us which 100th book you would add to Burgess's list by using the hashtag #99Novels on Twitter.

If you have enjoyed this episode, why not leave us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.

In this episode, Andrew Biswell of the Burgess Foundation speaks to writer and editor Alan Taylor about two novels by Muriel Spark: The Girls of Slender Means and The Mandelbaum Gate.

Born in 1918, Muriel Spark was a novelist, poet, essayist and biographer. Her novels are celebrated as pioneering works of postmodernism and she was twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She is best known for The Prime of Miss Jean Brody, which was adapted for the screen in 1969. She lived in Edinburgh, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), New York, Rome, and latterly in Tuscany, where she died in 2006.

Alan Taylor is the author of Appointment in Arezzo: A Friendship with Muriel Spark. In 2018, he was the series editor of Spark’s Collected Novels, published by Polygon to celebrate her centenary. He was the founding editor of the Scottish Review of Books and the Managing Editor of the Scotsman. He is a long-standing member of the Scottish team on BBC Radio 4’s Round Britain Quiz. Madly, Deeply: The Diaries of Alan Rickman, edited by Alan Taylor, is out now.

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BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

By Muriel Spark:

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961)

Loitering with Intent (1981)

By others:

Macbeth by William Shakespeare (1606)

The Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens (Anonymous, 1765)

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (1867)

The Wreck of the Deutschland by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1918)

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (1945)

The End of the Affair by Graham Greene (1951)

Tremor of Intent by Anthony Burgess (1966)

The Clockwork Testament by Anthony Burgess (1974)

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carré (1974)

A Perfect Spy by John Le Carré (1986)

Muriel Spark: The Biography by Martin Stannard (2009)

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LINKS

Madly, Deeply: The Diaries of Alan Rickman edited by Alan Taylor (Canongate)

The Complete Muriel Spark at Polygon

Appointment in Arezzo: A Friendship with Muriel Spark by Alan Taylor (Polygon)

The Assassin's Cloak: An Anthology of the World's Best Diarists, edited by Irene and Alan Taylor (Canongate)

International Anthony Burgess Foundation

The theme music is Anthony Burgess's Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor. It is performed by No Dice Collective.

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If you have enjoyed this episode, why not leave us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.

In this episode, we’re heading to an alternate universe as writer, academic and curator Glyn Morgan guides the Burgess Foundation's Graham Foster through Pavane by Keith Roberts.

Published in 1968, Pavane is set in a Great Britain ruled by the Catholic Church after the assassination of Elizabeth I. The story picks up in the twentieth century, and follows a disparate group of characters as they navigate a world on the cusp of rebellion. Burgess lauds the depiction of a ‘modern England that is also medieval’ and calls the novel ‘a striking work of the imagination’.

Keith Roberts was born in Kettering in 1935. He wrote thirteen novels, including The Furies, The Chalk Giants and Molly Zero. He was also an illustrator and worked on the artwork for New Worlds and Impulse magazines. He died in 2000 at the age of 65.

Glyn Morgan is a writer, academic and curator based in London. He is the author of Imagining the Unimaginable: Speculative Fiction and the Holocaust (Bloomsbury) and curator of the forthcoming blockbuster immersive exhibition Science Fiction: Voyage to the Edge of Imagination, which opens at the Science Museum in London on 6 October 2022 and runs until 4 May 2023. Glyn has also edited a new volume of essays, interviews and 200 colour illustrations to accompany the exhibition (Thames and Hudson).

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BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

By Keith Roberts:

The Chalk Giants (1974)

By others:

The History of the Universal Monarchy: Napoleon and the Conquest of the World by Louis Geoffroy (1836)

Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague de Camp (1939)

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (1949)

Bring the Jubilee by Ward Moore (1953)

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr (1959)

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (1962)

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick (1962)

The Alteration by Kinglsey Amis (1976)

Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban (1980)

Neuromancer by William Gibson (1984)

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell (1996)

The Loney by Andrew Micheal Hurley (2014)

A Man Lies Dreaming by Lavie Tidhar (2014)

Science Fiction and Catholicism: The Rise and Fall of the Robot Papacy by Jim Clarke (2019)

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LINKS

Imagining the Unimaginable: Speculative Fiction and the Holocaust by Glyn Morgan

Science Fiction: Voyage to the Edge of Imagination at the Science Museum, London

International Anthony Burgess Foundation

The theme music is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, and is performed by No Dice Collective.

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If you have enjoyed this episode, why not leave us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.

In this episode, the Burgess Foundation's Graham Foster learns about Elizabeth Bowen’s The Heat of the Day with writer and academic Jessica Gildersleeve.

Published in 1949, The Heat of the Day tells the story of Stella Rodney, a divorcee living in London in the dying days of the Blitz. When she is informed by a mysterious man called Harrison that her partner Robert is selling state secrets to the Nazis, she is cast in the role of unwilling spy.

Elizabeth Bowen was born in Dublin in 1899. She began her career as a writer in 1923 with Encounters, a book of short stories. Her novels include The Last September, The House in Paris and The Death of the Heart. During the war, she worked at the Ministry of Information, reporting on the opinions of Irish citizens about their nation’s neutrality. She died in 1973.

Jessica Gildersleeve is Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Southern Queensland. Her books include two on Elizabeth Bowen: Elizabeth Bowen and the Writing of Trauma: The Ethics of Survivaland Elizabeth Bowen: Theory, Thought, and Things. Her other work on women’s wartime writing in Britain and in Australia includes studies of Rosamond Lehmann, Rose Macaulay, Virginia Woolf, Jean Rhys, and Eleanor Dark. Her latest book is Screening the Gothic in Australia and New Zealand: Contemporary Antipodean Film and Television, is out now from Amsterdam University Press.

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BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

By Elizabeth Bowen:

To the North (1932)

The Death of the Heart (1938)

Bowen's Court (1942)

Seven Winters: Memories of a Dublin Childhood (1942)

The Demon Lover and Other Stories (1945)

'Notes on Writing a Novel' in Collected impressions (1950)

By others:

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie (1939)

The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer (1948)

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (1966)

The Shining by Stephen King (1977)

Loaded by Christos Tsiolkas (1995)

The Night Watch by Sarah Waters (2006)

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LINKS

Elizabeth Bowen: Theory, Thought, Things, ed by Jessica Gildersleeve and Patricia Juliana Smith (Edinburgh University Press)

Elizabeth Bowen and the Writing of Trauma: The Ethics of Survival by Jessica Gildersleeve (Brill)

Screening the Gothic in Australia and New Zealand: Contemporary Antipodean Film and Television, ed by Jessica Gildersleeve and Kate Cantrell (Amsterdam University Press)

International Anthony Burgess Foundation

The theme music is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, and is performed by No Dice Collective.

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Why not leave us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.

In this episode writer and academic John Bowen guides Andrew Biswell of the Burgess Foundation through Nineteen-Eighty Four by George Orwell.

Published in 1949, Nineteen-Eighty Four is one of the most revered pieces of dystopian fiction ever written. Telling the story of Winston Smith, an office drone who works for the Ministry of Truth, Orwell’s novel creates a terrifying vision of a totalitarian Britain.

George Orwell was born as Eric Blair in 1903 in India. He is renowned for his political writing in the non-fiction books The Road to Wigan Pier and Down and Out in Paris and London. His novels include Animal Farm, Burmese Days and Keep the Aspidistra Flying. He died in 1950. 

John Bowen is Professor of Nineteenth-Century Literature at the University of York. He is the author of Other Dickens: Pickwick to Chuzzlewit and has edited Anthony Trollope’s Barchester Towers and Phineas Redux for Oxford World’s Classics. He has contributed to a number of television documentaries and radio programmes, including BBC Radio 4's In Our Time, Front Row, Open Book, and Woman's Hour, Channel 4’s Dickens’s Secret Lover and BBC2’s Being the Brontes.

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BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

By George Orwell:

Burmese Days (1934)

A Clergyman's Daughter (1935)

Coming Up for Air (1939)

Animal Farm (1945)

By others:

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818)

Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens (1839)

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (1843)

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (1924)

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932)

Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler (1940)

Molloy by Samuel Beckett (1951)

Malone Dies by Samuel Beckett (1951)

The Unnameable by Samuel Beckett (1953)

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (1962)

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (1966)

Troubles by J.G. Farrell (1970)

G by John Berger (1972)

The Siege of Krishnapur by J.G. Farrell (1973)

Slow Days, Fast Company by Eve Babitz (1977)

Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald (1979)

Good Behaviour by Molly Keane (1981)

The Life and Times of Micheal K by J.M. Coetzee (1983)

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LINKS

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (edited by John Bowen) at Oxford University Press

'Charles Dickens' by George Orwell at The Orwell Foundation

International Anthony Burgess Foundation

The theme music is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, and is performed by No Dice Collective.

-------

If you have enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to leave us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.

In this episode writer and academic David Ian Paddy guides the Burgess Foundation's Will Carr through the strange world of The Unlimited Dream Company by J.G. Ballard.

Published in 1979, the novel begins with a man named Blake crashing a plane into the River Thames outside of Ballard’s hometown, the suburb of Shepperton. He soon finds he cannot leave the suburb, and manifests a series of extraordinary powers. But is his elevation to a kind of messiah reality, or did he really die in the plane crash?

J.G. Ballard was born in Shanghai, where his father worked for a textile company. After internment during the war, the Ballard family moved to Britain in 1945. He published his first book, The Wind from Nowhere in 1961. He went on to publish 18 more novels along with several volumes of short stories, essays and an autobiography. He died in 2009.

David Ian Paddy is the Albert Upton Endowed Chair in English Language and Literature at Whittier College in California. He specialises in twentieth century and contemporary British literature and has written extensively on writers such as J.G. Ballard, Angela Carter, Niall Griffiths, Jackie Kay and Jeff Noon. His book The Empires of J.G. Ballard: An Imaginitive Geography was published in 2015 by Gylphi Press.

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BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

By J.G. Ballard:

The Drowned World (1962)

The Terminal Beach (1964)

The Crystal World (1966)

The Atrocity Exhibition (1970)

Crash (1973)

High Rise (1975)

Hello America (1981)

"The Intensive Care Unit" in Myths of the Near Future (1982)

Empire of the Sun (1984)

"Which Way to Inner Space?" in A User's Guide to the Millennium: Essays and Reviews (1996)

By others:

The Golden Bough by James George Frazer (1890)

Ulysses by James Joyce (1922)

Finnegans Wake by James Joyce (1939)

Foundation by Isaac Asimov (1942)

Pincher Martin by William Golding (1956)

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (1962)

The Wanting Seed by Anthony Burgess (1962)

The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien (1967)

Ice by Anna Kavan (1967)

MF by Anthony Burgess (1971)

Napoleon Symphony by Anthony Burgess (1974)

The End of the World News by Anthony Burgess (1982)

Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter (1984)

Puma by Anthony Burgess (2019)

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LINKS

The Empires of J.G. Ballard: An Imaginitive Geography by David Ian Paddy at Gylphi Press

International Anthony Burgess Foundation

The theme music is Anthony Burgess's Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor. It is performed by No Dice Collective.

-------

If you have enjoyed this episode, why not leave us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.

In this episode, the Burgess Foundation's Graham Foster talks to novelist Kim Sherwood about Goldfinger by Ian Fleming, the seventh novel in the James Bond series.

Published in 1959, it follows James Bond as he investigates the activities of the villainous Auric Goldfinger, a man obsessed with wealth and determined to steal the gold reserves of the United States. In his review in Ninety-Nine Novels, Burgess declared that Fleming's writing 'raised the standard of the popular story’, and he argued against the notion that Fleming was not a literary writer.

Ian Fleming was born in 1908, and worked as a journalist before the Second World War, during which he served in the Naval Intelligence Division, a posting which directly inspired the creation of James Bond. He wrote all of the Bond stories at his house, Goldeneye, in Jamaica, and while the spy thrillers dominated his writing career, he also wrote Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang. He died in 1964 at the age of 56.  

Kim Sherwood is a novelist and lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Edinburgh. She published her first novel, Testament, in 2018 and was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award the following year. Her latest novel is Double or Nothing, the first in a new trilogy which follows a group of Double O agents as they search for a missing James Bond, is available now from HarperCollins.

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BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

By Ian Fleming:

From Russia, with Love (1957)

'Risico' in For Your Eyes Only (1960)

On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1963)

Thrilling Cities (1963)

By others:

Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse (1934)

Venetia by Georgette Heyer (1958)

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LINKS:

Double or Nothing by Kim Sherwood at HarperCollins

Kim Sherwood on Twitter

Kim Sherwood on Instagram

Ian Fleming Website

International Anthony Burgess Foundation

The theme music is Anthony Burgess's Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor. It is performed by No Dice Collective.

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You can join the conversation and tell us which 100th book you would add to Burgess's list by using the hashtag #99Novels on Twitter.

If you have enjoyed this episode, why not leave us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Andrew Biswell of the Burgess Foundation explores fictional representations of Jesus Christ with writer Nicholas Graham, author of The Judas Case.

We begin with Anthony Burgess’s 1979 novel, Man of Nazareth, an ambitious account of Jesus’s life from the point of view of a fictional Greek merchant. The novel was written at the same time as Burgess’s teleplay Jesus of Nazareth which was filmed by Franco Zeffirelli with Robert Powell in the lead role.

Nicholas Graham also introduces his own book, The Judas Case. Retired spymaster Solomon Eliades is called back into service to investigate the death of Yehuda of Kerioth, better known as Judas Iscariot, the most able undercover agent the Temple guard ever produced.

Nicholas Graham studied creative writing at Manchester Metropolitan University. He was a member of the Sidney Sussex College Cambridge University team that won BBC2’s University Challenge – Champions Reunited series. An early draft of The Judas Case won a 2016 Northern Writers Awards New Fiction Bursary. Nicholas lives with his partner in a remote coastal village in Cumbria.

LINKS

Nicholas Graham on Twitter

The Judas Case Blog

The Judas Case by Nicholas Graham at The Book Guild

International Anthony Burgess Foundation

If you have enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to leave us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ninety-Nine Novels, Series 2, releases weekly from the 7 September 2022. 

This series, we’ll be travelling to alternate universes and dystopian futures, exploring history and legend, and setting sail for exotic locations such as Miami, Cuba and Jerusalem. Along the way, we’ll meet a second world war flight crew, a terrifying dictator, a variety of priests, wizards and knights, and, of course, a world-famous super-spy. We’ll be guided on this journey by experts, who illuminate each of the novels and their authors.

Ninety-Nine Novels is a podcast by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, and is for anyone interested in the greatest novels of the last century, and anyone keen to discover hidden gems.

Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode we’re looking at the state of Literary London during the Second World War with writer Will Loxley.

Will’s book Writing in the Dark: Bloomsbury, the Blitz and Horizon Magazine, brings to life the cultural and intellectual environment that influenced some of Anthony Burgess’s most defining thoughts about writing and literature. Many of the writers that feature in this story, such as Stephen Spender, George Orwell, Dylan Thomas and Evelyn Waugh, had the development of their creative lives arrested by the war. This was the same fate as Burgess, who felt he had been exiled to a military post in Gibraltar. But all of these writers tried to make sense of the war through literature and what they produced remains some of the most important work of the twentieth century.

Will Loxley is a writer based in Sheffield. Writing in the Dark is his first book and was called ‘energetic and enthused’ by the Times. He is currently working on his second book, A Novel Idea: The Race to Master the English Novel from Daniel Defoe to Jane Austen. 

Will can be found on Twitter @WillLoxley

Writing in the Dark is published by Weidenfeld & Nicholson and is now available in paperback from your favourite place to buy books.

For more about Anthony Burgess and to find out how you can support the work of the Burgess Foundation, visit our website.

If you have enjoyed this episode, why not leave us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s June 2022 and we’re celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses with a series of podcasts exploring Anthony Burgess’s love of the novel. 

In this episode, Andrew Biswell of the Burgess Foundation talks to David Collard about his book Multiple Joyce, a study of Joyce’s cultural legacy over one hundred essays that often reveal unexpected connections and insights into what Joyce and his work means for modern audiences.

David Collard is a writer, reviewer, researcher, editor and broadcaster. His writing regularly appears in the Times Literary Supplement and Literary Review, and he has appeared on BBC Radio 3 and 4. His first book was About a Girl: A Readers’ Guide to Eimear McBride’s A Girl is a Half Formed Thing. He is currently working on books about WH Auden, the New Review, and a memoir of his upbringing as a reluctant Jehovah’s Witness.

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LINKS:

David Collard's website

David Collard on Twitter

Multiple Joyce by David Collard at Sagging Meniscus Press

International Anthony Burgess Foundation

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If you have enjoyed this episode, don't forget to leave us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s June 2022 and we’re celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses with a series of podcasts exploring Anthony Burgess’s love of the novel. 

In this episode, the Burgess Foundation's Will Carr tells the story of Blooms of Dublin, Burgess's musical adaptation of Ulysses which was first performed in Dublin in 1982 to mark the centenary of Joyce's birth. The episode contains recordings of Burgess talking about how he adapted such a complex novel into a stage musical, an interview with Frank Grimes, who played Stephen Dedalus in the production, and new recordings of several of the songs from Blooms of Dublin.

The songs performed in this episode are:

'Today' – a song that celebrates Bloomsday, 16 June 1904, the day on which the novel takes place. This takes place on a Dublin street. Leopold Bloom, a baritone, sings a relaxed ballad in which he anticipates meeting someone new on this otherwise ordinary day. Owen Gilhooly sings the part of Bloom.

'Four O'Clock Tea' – Leopold Bloom’s wife is Molly Bloom, a professional soprano singer. While Bloom is out in the street, she is waking up in bed, and her song ‘Four O’Clock Tea’ anticipates meeting her lover that afternoon, Blazes Boylan. Bloom surprises her halfway through with her breakfast on a tray, and is furious to learn that Boylan will be visiting. Rachel Croash sings the part of Molly.

'Paris is a Lamp Lit for Lovers' – Stephen Dedalus, who is visiting a brothel with Bloom, describes his adventures in Paris, and the music moves from a gentle ballad to a lively cancan, and back again. The part of Stephen is sung by Philip O’Connor.

'Final Scene' – an extract from the 17-minute finale of Blooms of Dublin, sung by Molly Bloom as she reprises many of the numbers of the play and mixes them with new material in a musical recreation of Joyce's famous virtuoso monologue that ends the novel. Once again, Rachel Croash takes the part of Molly.

The piano on all of these songs is played by David Jones. The musical director is Richard Strivens and the sound engineer is Sam Gee.

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For more information on Anthony Burgess and to find out how you can support our work, visit the Burgess Foundation online.

Don't forget to leave us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s June 2022 and we’re celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses with a series of podcasts exploring Anthony Burgess’s love of the novel. In this episode, Andrew Biswell of the Burgess Foundation looks at Burgess’s formative visits to Dublin, and how his passion for Joyce’s work led to his television documentary, Silence, Exile and Cunning.

Find out how Burgess first discovered the work of James Joyce, how it chimed with his own experiences as a lapsed Catholic, and how he ended up visiting the ruins of Leopold Bloom's home in Dublin. You can also hear Burgess read from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and hear Burgess's thoughts on Joyce and Dublin in archive recordings.

This episode was written and narrated by Andrew Biswell

For more on Anthony Burgess and to find out how you can support the work of the Burgess Foundation, visit our website.

If you have enjoyed this episode, don't forget to leave us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, we explore the art of translation. Andrew Biswell from the Burgess Foundation talks to Burgess's German translator, Ludger Tolksdorf, who has recently completed his translation of Anthony Burgess's The Malayan Trilogy.

Ludger is based in Bonn, Germany, and works as a translator and literary editor. The first volume of his translation of The Malayan Trilogy, Jetzt ein Tiger, in out now from Elsinor. The second and third volumes Der Feind in der Decke and Die Betten im Orient will be published by Elsinor in Spring 2022.

Ludger's latest book as editor is Sommerleithe by Klaus Weise, and is available now from Elsinor.

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LINKS:

Jetzt ein Tiger by Anthony Burgess, translated by Ludger Tolksdorf, at Elsinor (German)

Sommerleithe by Klaus Weise, edited by Ludger Tolksdorf, at Elsinor (German) 

Ludger Tolksdorf's website (German)

International Anthony Burgess Foundation 

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If you have enjoyed this podcast, don't forget to leave a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.

In this episode, we talk to writer James Walker about Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe. The novel follows Arthur Seaton, a rebellious young factory worker who works all week so he can spend the weekends drinking and fraternising with married women. Sillitoe’s writing celebrates the working-class spirit of Arthur, and is a vital, alive depiction of the Nottingham streets in which he lives.

Alan Sillitoe was born in Nottingham in 1928. He took up writing, living in France and Spain where he began writing Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. He died in 2010 after writing over 70 works of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama, and children’s stories.

James Walker is a writer who specialises in the fiction of Nottingham. He is a former member of the Alan Sillitoe Committee and created The Sillitoe Trail, a multimedia digital platform in which he explored the enduring relevance of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. His current project is Whatever People Say I Am, a comic series challenging stereotypes.

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BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

By Alan Sillitoe:

A Man of His Time (2004)

By others:

Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence (1960)

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (1962)

The Killing Jar by Nicola Monaghan (2006)

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LINKS:

Sillitoe's Final Interview (by James Walker)

James Walker's Nottingham Essay on BBC Radio 3 (YouTube)

The Sillitoe Trail

Dawn of the Unread, an online graphic novel celebrating Nottingham's literary history, by James Walker

The Loneliness of the Lockdown Runner, an Instagram project by James Walker

James Walker's comic series Whatever People Say I Am

International Anthony Burgess Foundation

The theme music is Anthony Burgess's Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor. It is performed by No Dice Collective.

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You can join the conversation and tell us which 100th book you would add to Burgess's list by using the hashtag #99Novels on Twitter.

If you have enjoyed this episode, why not leave us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.

In this episode, Will Carr of the Burgess Foundation talks to academic and writer Marius Hentea about Henry Green’s 1939 novel Party Going, a strange and mysterious novel which deals with the complex social interactions of socialites and workers alike. It is by turns comic, lyrical and expressive, but is not necessarily easy to interpret.

Marius Hentea is Professor of English Literature at the University of Gothenburg. He has previously studied and taught at universities in France, Belgium, America and the UK. His main areas of research are modernism and the avant garde and he has published two books: Henry Green at the Limits of Modernism and Tata Dada: The Real Life and Celestial Adventures of Tristan Tzara. He is currently researching authorship and treason at the beginning of the Cold War.

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BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

By Henry Green:

Living (1929)

Pack My Bag: A Self-Portrait (1940)

Loving (1949)

By others:

Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh (1930)

Afternoon Men by Anthony Powell (1931)

Correction by Thomas Bernhard (1975)

The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative by Frank Kermode (1979)

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LINKS:

Henry Green at the Limits of Modernism by Marius Hentea (Sussex Academic Press)

International Anthony Burgess Foundation

The theme music is Anthony Burgess's Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor. It is performed by No Dice Collective.

-------

You can join the conversation and tell us which 100th book you would add to Burgess's list by using the hashtag #99Novels on Twitter.

If you have enjoyed this episode, why not leave us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.

In this episode, Andrew Biswell of the Burgess Foundation speaks to academic and writer Will Ghosh about A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul, a novel Burgess described as ‘beautifully composed […] with an almost Conradian power of description.’

First published in 1979, A Bend in the River is a disturbing work which explores the violence and disorder which often go hand in hand with aggressively nationalistic regimes. It is a complex novel about the difficulties of newly independent nations, and the ambiguous legacies of the colonial period.

Will Ghosh teaches Victorian and Modern Literature at Jesus College in the University of Oxford. His research focuses on Caribbean and South Asian literatures after 1945. He has written extensively about VS Naipaul, and published his first book, VS Naipaul, Caribbean Writing and Caribbean Thought, in 2020.

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BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

By V.S. Naipaul:

Miguel Street (1959)

A House for Mr Biswas (1961)

The Middle Passage (1962)

The Mimic Men (1967)

Guerillas (1975)

A Congo Diary (1980)

Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey (1981)

The Enigma of Arrival (1987)

India: A Million Mutinies Now (1990)

A Way in the World (1994)

Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples (1998)

By others:

Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann (1901)

The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian by Nirad C. Chaudhuri (1951)

The Novel Now by Anthony Burgess (1967)

The Dragon Can't Dance by Earl Lovelace (1979)

Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald (1979)

Roots by Edward Kamau Braithwaite (1986)

The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald (1995)

The 100 Best Novels in English by Robert McCrum (2016)

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LINKS:

VS Naipaul, Caribbean Writing and Caribbean Thought by Will Ghosh at Oxford University Press

Will Ghosh's introduction to V.S. Naipaul

Will Ghosh in conversation with Homi K. Bhabha

International Anthony Burgess Foundation

The theme music is Anthony Burgess’s Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor, performed by No Dice Collective.

-------

You can join the conversation and tell us which 100th book you would add to Burgess's list by using the hashtag #99Novels on Twitter.

If you have enjoyed this episode, why not leave us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.

In this episode, Graham Foster of the Burgess Foundation talks to Avril Horner about The Bell by Iris Murdoch, a novel Burgess calls ‘intensely poetic’ and ‘beautifully organised’.

First published in 1958, The Bell tells the story of Dora Greenfield, an impulsive young woman, who moves with her husband to a lay religious community in the grounds of Imber Abbey. There, she discovers an old bell at the bottom of a lake, and sets in motion events that will expose secret desires and lead to tragic consequences.

Avril Horner is Emeritus Professor of English at Kingston University, London. She specialises in women’s writing and gothic literature and has published widely on authors such as Daphne du Maurier, Edith Wharton, and Iris Murdoch. Her latest book is Living on Paper: Letters from Iris Murdoch 1934-1995, which she edited with Anne Rowe, with whom she has also edited books on Iris Murdoch and morality and the texts and contexts of Iris Murdoch. She is currently working, with Sue Zlosnik on the book Comic Gothic, which will be released by Edinburgh University Press in 2023.

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BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

By Iris Murdoch:

Under the Net (1954)

The Flight from the Enchanter (1956)

The Sandcastle (1957)

A Severed Head (1961)

The Unicorn (1963)

The Time of the Angels (1966)

The Nice and the Good (1968)

A Fairly Honourable Defeat (1970)

The Sovereignty of Good (1970)

The Black Prince (1973)

The Sea, The Sea (1978)

Nuns and Soldiers (1980)

The Book and the Brotherhood (1987)

The Message to the Planet (1989)

Existentialists and Mystics (1997)

By others:

The Need for Roots by Simone Weil (1952)

The Notebooks of Simone Weil (1954)

Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead by Barbara Comyns (1954)

The Skin Chairs by Barbara Comyns (1962)

The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry (2016)

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LINKS:

Living on Paper: Letters from Iris Murdoch 1934-1995, ed by Avril Horner and Anne Rowe

The Iris Murdoch Society

International Anthony Burgess Foundation

The theme music is Anthony Burgess's Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor. It is performed by No Dice Collective.

-------

You can join the conversation and tell us which 100th book you would add to Burgess's list by using the hashtag #99Novels on Twitter.

If you have enjoyed this episode, why not leave us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.

In this episode, Graham Foster of the Burgess Foundation talks to writer and academic Simon Malpas about Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon.

Published in 1973, Gravity’s Rainbow has become one of the most revered American novels of the post-war period. It’s a hard novel to summarise, the plot being a complicated tangle of characters and situations, self-referential twists and historical detail, riotous humour and pointed satire. In his review of Gravity’s Rainbow in Ninety-Nine Novels, Anthony Burgess describes it as ‘the war book to end them all’, saying that it describes the obscenity of war in a way that was not available to the poets and novelists writing about the First World War.

Simon Malpas is a Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Edinburgh University, and has written an introduction to the work of Thomas Pynchon with Andrew Taylor which helps demystifying many of the themes and philosophies running through Pynchon’s novels: Thomas Pynchon by Simon Malpas and Andrew Taylor is published by Manchester University Press and out now.

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BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

By Thomas Pynchon:

V (1963)

The Crying of Lot 49 (1966)

Mason and Dixon (1997)

Inherent Vice (2009)

Bleeding Edge (2013)

By others:

Ulysses by James Joyce (1922)

The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer (1948)

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961)

MF by Anthony Burgess (1971)

Napoleon Symphony by Anthony Burgess (1974)

The Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell (1975)

Dhalgren by Samuel Delaney (1975)

Beard's Roman Women by Anthony Burgess (1976)

1985 by Anthony Burgess (1978)

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LINKS:

Thomas Pynchon by Simon Malpas and Andrew Taylor at Manchester University Press

International Anthony Burgess Foundation

The theme music is Anthony Burgess's Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor. It is performed by No Dice Collective.

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You can join the conversation and tell us which 100th book you would add to Burgess's list by using the hashtag #99Novels on Twitter.

If you have enjoyed this episode, why not leave us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

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In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.

In this episode, Graham Foster of the Burgess Foundation talks to writer and academic Michael Mitchell about Heartland by Sir Wilson Harris.

Published in 1964, Heartland is a complex and experimental novel set in the rainforests of Guyana. The story follows Zachariah Stevenson as he ventures beyond the treeline and succumbs to madness. Harris’s writing is as dense as the forest it describes and the novel blends poetry and prose as Stevenson begins to question the boundaries between the living and the dead.

Michael Mitchell is a lecturer at the University of Paderborn in Germany, and an Honorary Fellow at the Yesu Persaud Centre for Caribbean Studies at the University of Warwick. He has written extensively on postcolonial literature, especially the works of Sir Wilson Harris. He has recently written introductions to the Wilson Harris novels Ascent to Omai, The Eye of the Scarecrow, and Heartland, all published by Peepal Tree Press.

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BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

By Sir Wilson Harris:

The Palace of the Peacock (1960)

The Black Marsden: A Tabula Rasa Comedy (1972)

Companions of the Day and Night (1975)

Jonestown (1996) The Dark Jester (2001)

The Mask of the Beggar (2003)

The Ghost of Memory (2006)

By others:

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)

The Secret of the Golden Flower by Lü Dongbin (trans. by Richard Wilhem, 1929)

Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot (1941)

Watt by Samuel Beckett (1953)

My Bones and My Flute by Edgar Mittelholzer (1955)

Wilson Harris: A Philosophical Approach by C.L.R. James (1965)

Darkness Visible by William Golding (1979)

Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee (1980)

Decolonising the Mind by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1986)

The Heather Blazing by Colm Toibin (1992)

Remembering Babylon by David Malouf (1993)

Our Lady of Demerara by David Dabydeen (2004)

The Marvellous Equations of the Dread: A Novel in Bass Riddim by Marcia Douglas (2016)

Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James (2019)

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LINKS:

Micheal Mitchell's obituary of Wilson Harris in the Guardian

Wilson Harris at Peepal Tree Press:

New edition of Palace of the Peacock at Faber

International Anthony Burgess Foundation

The theme music is Anthony Burgess's Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor. It is performed by No Dice Collective

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If you have enjoyed this episode, why not leave us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.

In this episode, Graham Foster of the Burgess Foundation talks to novelist David Morrell about Giles Goat-Boy by John Barth.

Giles Goat-Boy is simultaneously one of the most revered and complex postmodern novels of the 1960s, and a strange patchwork of allegories, from the Bible to the events of the Cold War. Burgess describes the book as a 'work that extends the scope of the novel - or rather reminds it of the scope it has lost, along with a whimsical fantasticality best exemplified in Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy.'

David Morrell is best known for his novel First Blood, which introduced the world to John Rambo, later played by Sylvester Stallone in a series of films. He completed his PhD thesis on the novels of John Barth, which was later published as John Barth: An Introduction. More recently he has written a series of crime novels featuring the famed opium-eater Thomas de Quincy. This trilogy, beginning with Murder as a Fine Art, is available now from Mulholland Books. John Barth: An Introduction is currently available as an ebook.

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BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

By John Barth:

The Sot-Weed Factor (1960)

Lost in the Funhouse (1968)

The Tidewater Tales (1987)

By others:

The Hero: A Study in Tradition, Myth and Drama by Lord Raglan (1936)

Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household (1939)

The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell (1949)

'Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way' in Girl with Curious Hair by David Foster Wallace (1989)

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LINKS:

David Morrell's website

David Morrell on Twitter

International Anthony Burgess Foundation

The theme music is Anthony Burgess's Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor. It is performed by No Dice Collective.

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You can join the conversation and tell us which 100th book you would add to Burgess's list by using the hashtag #99Novels on Twitter. If you have enjoyed this episode, why not leave us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.

In this episode, Will Carr of the Burgess Foundation talks to writer and academic Alison Arant about Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor.

Published in 1952, Wise Blood is Flannery O’Connor’s first novel and shows many of the themes that would come to characterise her short but extraordinary career. Set in the American South, and dealing with a cast of grotesques, it is a novel of complex religious themes and has come to be known as a classic of twentieth century literature.

Alison Arant is Associate Professor and Chair of the English Department at Wagner College in Staten Island, New York. Her research focusses on the American South, African American literature and women’s literature. Her most recent publication is Reconsidering Flannery O’Connor, which she edited with Jordan Colfer. This collection examines new theoretical approaches to O’Connor’s work and interrogates established views of her fiction and legacy. It is available now from the University Press of Mississippi.

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BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

By Flannery O'Connor:

Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose (1957)

Everything That Rises Must Converge (1965)

'A Good Man is Hard to Find' in The Complete Short Stories (1971)

By others:

Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess (1980)

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (1970)

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LINKS:

Reconsidering Flannery O'Connor at University Press of Mississippi

The Andalusia Institute Website

International Anthony Burgess Foundation

The theme music is Anthony Burgess's Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor. It is performed by No Dice Collective.

-------

You can join the conversation and tell us which 100th book you would add to Burgess's list by using the hashtag #99Novels on Twitter.

If you have enjoyed this episode, why not leave us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 1984, Anthony Burgess published Ninety-Nine Novels, a selection of his favourite novels in English since 1939. The list is typically idiosyncratic, and shows the breadth of Burgess's interest in fiction. This podcast, by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, explores the novels on Burgess's list with the help of writers, critics and other special guests.

For the first episode in our new series, Graham Foster of the Burgess Foundation talks to Enrico Terrinoni about James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, one of the first novels on Burgess's list.

Finnegans Wake has a dreamlike, circular narrative, which ostensibly tells the story of the pub landlord Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker and his family, who live in Dublin’s Chapelizod neighbourhood. But it is so much more than that, and threatens to escape the categorisation of literature itself.

Enrico Terrinoni is Professor of English Literature at the Università per Stranieri di Perugia, and Professor of Translation at IULM University of Milan. He has held many fellowship at universities in Ireland and America, including University College Dublin and Notre Dame University. As a translator into Italian, he has worked on authors such as George Orwell, Muriel Spark, Brendan Behan, Oscar Wilde, and George Bernard Shaw. He translated Finnegans Wake into Italian with Fabio Pedone, and in 2021 published the first ever bilingual annotated translation of Ulysses. He is currently working on a book about the “quantum theory of literature” and “probabilistic interpretation” and editing, with Declan Kiberd and Catherine Wilsdon, a book on Ulysses entitled The Book about Everything which will be published in June 2022 by Head of Zeus.

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BOOKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

By James Joyce:

Ulysses (1922)

The Shorter Finnegans Wake (edited by Anthony Burgess, 1966)

Finnegans Wake Audiobook (narrated by Barry McGovern and Marcella Riordan, 2021)

By others:

Here Comes Everybody by Anthony Burgess (1965)

The Egyptian Book of the Dead (c. 1250BCE)

The Books at the Wake by James S. Atherton (1959)

Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville (1853)

Lanark by Alasdair Gray (1981)

1982, Janine by Alasdair Gray (1984)

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LINKS:

Enrico Terrinoni's bilingual Ulysses at Bompiani

Enrico Terrinoni's book about Joyce in Rome, Su tutti i vivi e i morti: Joyce a Roma at Feltrinelli Editore

The Book About Everything, edited by Enrico Terrinoni, Declan Kiberd and Catherine Wilsdon at Head of Zeus (pre-order)

International Anthony Burgess Foundation

The theme music is Anthony Burgess's Concerto for Flute, Strings and Piano in D Minor. It is performed by No Dice Collective.

-------

You can join the conversation and tell us which 100th book you would add to Burgess's list by using the hashtag #99Novels on Twitter.

If you have enjoyed this episode, why not leave us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

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