Elizabeth Barrett Browning Book

Compulsive reading - probably the highest compliment anyone can pay to what is essentially a personal history book - sublimely orchestral. Burgess is as sensational as his literary persona makes him out to be, as eventful as his works, and not always palatable nor enviable. This book quotes extensively from letters, articles and interviews whenever appropriate and confirms the notion that Burgess is at his most appealing when he speaks for himself. And to read him in his own words is always a chance to raid his unbelievably extensive word-hoard.

Biswell calls Burgess out on his self-mythologising and factual inaccuracies repeatedly, cross-referencing remarks across interviews and written work. It is a rather insistently historian manner of calling his subject to account that is only especially appropriate here for the latter's loquaciousness and almost inveterate tendency towards self-fashioning. This is an attempt to establish a foothold upon Burgess' protean personae as composer, writer, husband, journalist, lyricist, school teacher, lecturer, essayist and cultural critic, maverick, wordsmith, raconteur and logophile. Illuminatingly, he calls using people as characters from real life 'renaming'; life and art are but seemingly two fictions running simultaneously. The less amused called him a 'liar'.

It is part biography, part publication history, part literary criticism - the latter-most may seem heavy on the side for readers who expect more straightforward narration. While it is not strictly necessary, a biography of a writer would be remarkably impoverished without an attempt to address the ideas that preoccupied him, especially if these perpetual themes that dominate his life are inextricable from his work. The second half of the book resembles a history of Burgess's literary and stage productions, at times it feels as if he was so industrious he had no life apart from writing and composing. (Not true.) His output of work after work is incredibly interesting and tells you far more about the man than other paltry quotidian details would have. Given that this is the first adequately-written biography, it is significant to have that all laid out at length and in detail. Some appreciation should be acknowledged for this book's engagement of contemporary reception, interacting with articles by critics such as Christopher Ricks, dissecting and disputing their interpretations as well as Burgess's responses to their reviews.

A section of personal interest was his time in Malaya; I thought A Clockwork Orange brilliant, but it wasn't until I had devoured The Malayan Trilogy that I started to appreciate his talents, and the chapter on his time there detailed his experiences of the British empire's twilight moments. He was a rebellious expatriate, preferring personal encounters with real people, which undoubtedly shaped his rather astute views on the colonial outpost's unique chaos. He remarked in 1956 that 'It is believed that the real trouble when Malayan independence comes will be between the Malays and the Chinese, who don't like each other, and people are talking of the monsoon-ditches running with blood!'. Given the events in the Malayan Peninsula in the following decade, he wasn't far from the truth.