Roger Lewis - Anthony Burgess: A Biography

1917

Born John Burgess Wilson, 25 February, at 91 Carisbrook Street, Harpurhey, north-east Manchester, to a Catholic Lancashire family. Son of Joseph Wilson, book-keeper and pianist, and dancer and singer Elizabeth Burgess Wilson. My mother had no living relatives. Family disappeared. Didnt know her at all. An unusual woman, judging from the photographs, a very beautiful blonde

1918

15 November: his only sister, Muriel, aged eight, dies of influenza and broncho-pneumonia in an epidemic. His mother, aged thirty, dies four days later of influenza and acute pneumonia.

His father and he lodge with his Protestant aunt his mothers sister Ann Bromley and her two daughters, Elsie and Betty, at Delauneys Road, Higher Crumpsall.

1921

Commences formal education (briefly) at a local Protestant school, where he is known as Jack Wilson.

1922

Father remarries Maggie Dwyer (ne Byrne) the landlady of the local pub, the Golden Eagle, Lodge Street, Miles Platting. I was politely (or not so) told to get out of what had become a West Indian preserve, Burgess commented sixty years later. His stepmother has two daughters, Agnes and Madge.

1923

Attends St Edmunds RC Elementary School, Upper Monsall Street. I was still weak and unmuscular through having no proper mother, he said.

1924

Moves to a tobacconists shop, 21 Princess Road, Moss Side. Attends Bishop Bilsborrow Memorial Elementary School, Princess Road.

Moves to live in an off-licence at 261 Moss Lane East.

Agnes marries Jack Tollitt and they live over the tobacconists shop.

Madge marries Clifford Kemp. Attends the Church of the Holy Name, Oxford Road, a stronghold of British Jesuitry, [which] would soon have to be deconsecrated for lack of a sufficient congregation. Islam was growing, Irish Catholicism disappearing.

1927

Stepsister, Agnes, gives birth to Dan at 261 Moss Lane East, which was to be turned into a shebeen before it was demolished.

1928

Contracts scarlet fever and stays at Monsall Isolation Hospital, Monsall Road, north-east Manchester. Holiday in Torquay and Torbay an essay on Torbay published in the childrens corner of the Daily Express. Illustrations published in the Manchester Guardian and Daily Express.

Attends Xaverian College secondary school, Victoria Park, Rusholme (since turned into a Muslim ghetto), on a scholarship.

1936

Sits for Customs and Excise examination. Comes 1,579th.

1937

October: starts at Victoria University of Manchester (formerly Owens College) on an English Literature degree course.

1938

18 April: his father dies in Fallowfield, a district of Manchester, of pleurisy and influenza, aged fifty-five.

1939

Short story, Grief, is awarded five guineas as the best piece of undergraduate writing, judged by Harold Nicolson.

Meets Llewela (Lynne) Isherwood (as he called her though the middle name appears on no official document) Jones, an Anglo-Welsh Protestant and fellow student, aged eighteen, daughter of the Headmaster of Bedwellty Grammar School. They get engaged. Tours Belgium, France, Holland and Luxembourg with Lynne and her friend Margaret Williams as Nazi anti-Semitism grows Burgesss Celto-Lancastrian nose is considered Jewish.

1940

Writes dissertation (now lost) on Christopher Marlowes Doctor Faustus.

Graduates with a IIi BA Hons in English Literature from Manchester University.

October: his stepmother dies from a heart attack. Gives private tuition in English and mathematics to a pupil who had been ill with cardiac rheumatism and had missed going to school. Is paid twenty-five pounds. I was ending my civilian life well off.

17 October: joins the Royal Army Medical Corps at Eskbank, near Edinburgh.

1941

Posted to the 189 Field Ambulance of the B Company at Cheviot Hall, near Morpeth, Northumberland. Over-extends his leave to stay with Lynne in Manchester and the military police come after him for desertion. His copy of Finnegans Wake is generally thought to be a code book.

Moves to the Entertainment Section of the 54th Division and becomes musical director of Army dance band, the Jaypees, based at Moreton-in-the-Marsh, Gloucestershire.

1942

22 January: marries Llewela (Lynne) Jones in Bournemouth registry office, as sergeant.

Undergoes training to transfer to Army Educational Corps. Posted to Emergency Medical Section of a lunatic asylum at Winwick, near Warrington, where he undertakes speech therapy with patients.

1943

New Years Day: posted to Infantry Training Centre, Peninsular Barracks, Warrington. Lynne works in London at the Board of Trade.

November: posted to Gibraltar as a training college lecturer in Speech and Drama. In London, Lynne, pregnant, is allegedly mugged and attacked by GI deserters; she miscarries.

1946

Promoted to sergeant major. Discharged, returns from Gibraltar to London to live with Lynne on Barons Court Road. Teaches sergeant-instructors at the Mid-West School of Education, Brinsford Lodge, near Wolverhampton, under the aegis of Birmingham University.