Anthony Burgess

Anthony Burgess was an English writer and composer, born in Harpurhey, Manchester, on 25 February 1917, and he died on 22 November 1993. He came from a modest background and studied at the University of Manchester. He worked as a teacher and colonial education officer, including a period in Malaya and Brunei, before turning to writing full time in the early 1960s. He wrote with great speed, producing dozens of novels along with criticism, journalism, translations and a large body of music, including symphonies. His best-known novel, A Clockwork Orange, is a dark satire of violence and free will, and it became even more famous through Stanley Kubrick's film. Burgess was fascinated by language, and his work is full of invented slang, wordplay and learned comedy. He also wrote about Shakespeare, James Joyce and the English language itself. He spent much of his later life abroad, in Italy, Malta and Monaco. He matters for his verbal inventiveness and his sharp, often funny questions about freedom and human nature.