Link to my new article “Peripatetic Burgess”

The former Roman apartment (top floor) of Anthony Burgess at 16A Piazza Santa Cecilia, Trastevere

“PERIPATETIC BURGESS”

Notes on a literary pilgrimage to the former houses of Anthony Burgess.

This travel article appears in the new issue of The End of the World Newsletter published online by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation (IABF). This big issue also includes very interesting contributions from Rob Spence, Martin Phipps, Bruce Parks, Yves Buelens, Andrew Biswell and Dougie Milton.

The article begins:

In the early pages of Earthly Powers (1980) Kenneth Toomey, seated at the bar of his Maltese home, imagines a wide-ranging travel memoir structured aleatorically, by a luckydip of souvenir matchbooks from a huge bowl. It is probable that Toomey’s creator had his own collection of international matchbooks. Anthony Burgess was not only a chain-smoker of Schimmelpennincks; he was also a serious peripatetic. I was on his trail.

Anthony Burgess is a daunting challenge for the literary pilgrim. A comprehensive tour would require stops in Manchester, London, Malaya, Brunei, Malta, Rome, Bracciano, Monaco and Lugano. In early 2008 I made do with visits to two former residences that have something more than biographical interest. Burgess often lent his homes wholesale to his fictional characters. In this case I would find the Maltese house given to Kenneth Toomey and the Roman apartment inhabited by characters in both Beard’s Roman Women (1976) and ABBA ABBA (1977).

The full article can be accessed here.

Burgess’s (and Toomey’s) former residence at 168 Triq il-Kbira, Lija, Malta

UPDATE (27/07): Some additional photographs that were not used in the published article.

Strait Street (“The Gut”) in Valletta, Malta

Statue of the poet Giuseppe Gioachino Belli (1791-1863) near the Ponte Garibaldi in Trastevere, Rome

Basilica of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere

Rome in the rain

[All photographs © 2009 Matthew Asprey.]