Anthony Burgess mural

Burgess was born John Anthony Burgess Wilson in Harpurhey in 1917. His father played piano in Manchester cinemas and music halls, and Burgess first hoped to become a composer. He did poorly in a physics examination, then considered essential for understanding acoustics, so he studied English at the University of Manchester instead. He wrote music for student theatre and was influenced by radical director Joan Littlewood, who encouraged his lifelong support for freedom of expression. Although writing and teaching paid his bills, he continued composing, including a ballet about Shakespeare. 

Tankpetrol painted Burgess as an older man in the tweed jacket he used to create his public “writer” image. Beside him is the line “we can destroy what we have written but we cannot unwrite it.” It comes from A Clockwork Orange, a brutal story shaped by a traumatic event. While Burgess served in the Second World War, American deserters attacked his pregnant wife. She lost the baby, later developed alcoholism and eventually died from liver disease. 

The novel gave Burgess a reputation for dark dystopian fiction, but many of his roughly 30 other books are comic. Some appeared under the name Joseph Kell. He believed he wrote better in hot weather and moved first to Sussex, then eventually to Monaco with his second wife Liliana. When he returned to Manchester in 1987, he was shocked to see childhood streets “falling to pieces” and full of “decay”. He described growing up among ‘hard drinking, hard fighting and ugliness’, and said reading and learning languages had offered an escape. 

Tankpetrol was born in Poland in 1982 and is now based in Manchester. He has become known internationally for large, striking portraits, with work across the city including Stevenson Square. Burgess, a lifelong smoker, died from lung cancer in 1993. His extensive archive is cared for by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation on Cambridge Street. Members of the public can arrange a visit, while parts of the collection can also be explored online. 

Read about the musical exploits of Anthony Burgess at the Anthony Burgess Foundation where you can also listen to this podcast about his life and works. Alternatively, watch this video compilation of Burgess reacting to Manchester when he returned in 1987.

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