Burgess, Anthony, pseudonym of John Anthony Burgess Wilson 1917-93
English novelist, critic and composer

He was born in Manchester, into a Catholic family of predominantly Irish background. His father ran a tobacconist's shop and his mother was a singer and dancer. He was educated at the Xaverian College, and at the University of Manchester where he studied language and literature. In World War II he served in the Royal Army Medical Corps and entertained the troops with his compositions. He married in 1942, and after the war taught in England before becoming an education officer (1954-59) in Malaya and Brunei, where his experiences inspired the three novels which became The Long Day Wanes: Time for a Tiger (1956), The Enemy in the Blanket (1958), and Beds in the East (1959). Invalided out of the Colonial Service with a suspected brain tumour, he was given a year to live and wrote five novels in a year to provide for his prospective widow, but it was she who died first. In 1968 he married the Contessa Pasi and went to live abroad, first in Italy, latterly in Monte Carlo and Switzerland. Among his many novels are his dark and violent vision of the future, A Clockwork Orange (1962), Napoleon Symphony (1974), Earthly Powers (1980), The Kingdom of the Wicked (1985), Mozart and the Wolfgang (1991) and A Dead Man in Deptford (1993). He was fascinated by language, as his various works of exegesis demonstrate. He also wrote biographies, books for children, and libretti.

Bibliography: Little Wilson and Big God (1987); You've Had Your Time (1990)