Anthony Burgess: Life and work

Anthony Burgess, in one's own name John Burgess Wilson was born on February 25, 1917 in Manchester. He lost his mother, Elizabeth Burgess Wilson, at the age of one year, when she was a casualty of the Spanish flu, which also took the life of his only sister Muriel. His father died of flu in 1938 and his stepmother from a heart attack in 1940.

Burgess was educated at Xaverian College and the University of Manchester. He served in the Royal Army Medical Corps and the Army Educational Corps from 1940-1946. In 1942 he married his first wife, Llewela Jones, in Bournemouth while he was a sergeant and the musical director of an army dance band. Their marriage was childless, and it lasted until she died from cirrhosis in 1968. Burgess died of lung cancer on 22 November 1993. His son Andrew died in London in 2002, while Liana Burgess - his second wife still lives in Monaco.

His first two novels, A Vision of Battlements, which drew upon his experiences in Gibraltar, and The Worm and the Ring he wrote after the war. His best known work - A Clockwork Orange arose in the year 1962.