Blimey, it’s 2023! Last time I looked, it was 2017! I remember as a boy trying to work out how old I would be when the millennium came to its close. It seemed impossibly far distant, and my age in the year 2000 impossibly old. And yet, here we are.I’m currently revamping this site, and… Continue reading Now, where were we?
William Boyd keeps producing engaging, literate fiction, peopled with believable characters who have interesting stories. I was first aware of him in the early eighties, when I enjoyed his debut novel A Good Man in Africa. This blackly humorous tale of diplomatic disaster in a fictional African republic led to comparisons with Evelyn Waugh, and… Continue reading William Boyd – Waiting for Sunrise
To Utrecht, for the bi-annual International James Joyce symposium, timed, naturally, to coincide with Bloomsday. I went as part of a panel of Burgessians, and we explored the links between our man’s work and their man.The venue, at the ancient university, was perfect, and the conference was enormously stimulating. I had a pleasant encounter with… Continue reading Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress
To the Burgess, for an excellent adaptation of the master’s rather obscure early novel, the film rights to which were once held by Francis Ford Coppola.Here’s my review, posted at the IABF site.
To Angers, for the fourth international colloquium at the Anthony Burgess Centre, this time focusing on Burgess’s encounters with the Elizabethans. It was, as usual, a very enjoyable event, and it was great to meet up with old Burgessian pals, and to make some new ones. Angers is a very pleasant town, with a chateau,… Continue reading Look Back at Angers
To the new headquarters of the IABF for the first in its series of events with contemporary writers. Mancunian Howard Jacobson was presenting his latest novel, The Finkler Question . What an excellent speaker and reader he is! Too often, writers are not actually terribly good at reading their own stuff, as students in my… Continue reading The Finkler Question
…is probably a good title for an article I shall write about my experience addressing the old boys of Malay College on the subject of their old teacher John Anthony Burgess Wilson. I hadn’t anticipated the scale of the event, though I had a suspicion when we arrived early and saw the banners.Here’s one: Sharon… Continue reading Mr Wilson’s Old Boys
I’ve been east before, of course. Why, only last year, I holidayed in Aldeburgh. But this is a bit different. I’m in Malaysia as the guest of uberblogger and Kuala Lumpur literary scene maven, Sharon Bakar. My mission is to give a couple of talks about Anthony Burgess, first to the old boys of Malay… Continue reading East