Anthony Burgess was born in Manchester in 1917, the son of a music hall artiste and a cinema pianist. His mother and sister died in the influenza epidemic of 1918, and he was soon part of a large Manchester Irish family when his father remarried. He attended the Catholic Xaverian College in Manchester, and then Manchester University, graduating in 1940. He was called up to the armed forces, and spent most of the war as an education officer, latterly in Gibraltar, an experience which formed the basis of his first novel,
A Vision of Battlements, which was not published until 1965.
Burgess – his full name was John Anthony Burgess Wilson – became a professional writer rather late in life, having pursued a career in education after demobilisation. He taught at a teacher-training
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Citation: Spence, Rob. "Anthony Burgess". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 March 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=644, accessed 25 November 2024.]
