Anthony Burgess on Utopia
In which our author describes his ideal society.
Anthony Burgess is not often described as a utopian thinker. His most famous novel, A Clockwork Orange, describes an urban landscape scarred with bleak Soviet-style tower-blocks, in which gangs of violent teenagers run rampage. Another dystopia, The Wanting Seed, imagines a future Britain facing overpopulation, with cities which sprawl for hundreds of miles, and a population sustained by the only meat that’s plentiful: human flesh. In his book 1985, Burgess tries to identify the appeal of dystopian worlds when he examines George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Dystopian fiction is a resilient genre because it uses possible futures to highlight the political and social ailments of the present. Nineteen Eighty-Four, according to Burgess, is specifically about the state of Britain in 1948. The Wanting Seed arose from a concern, much debated in the 1960s, about the possible consequences of booming populations in Europe, America, China and South-East Asia.
Utopian ideas in fiction are much more difficult to convey than muscular depictions of restrictive societies and the corruption of the ruling class. Fictional utopias based on scientific rationalism or technological improvements can often be shattered by the baser instincts of humankind. Burgess considered the fiction of H.G. Wells as an example of a utopian ideal brought low by reality:
Science and education, said Wells, would outlaw war, poverty, squalor. All of us carry an image of the Wellsian future — rational buildings of steel and glass, rational tunics, clean air, a diet of scientifically balanced vitamin-capsules, clean trips to the moon, perpetual world peace. It was a fine dream, and what nation could better realise it than the Germans? After all, their scientific and educational achievements seemed to put them in the vanguard of Utopia-builders. What, though, did they give to the world? A new dark ages, a decade of misery.
He was suspicious of those who, after Wells, tried to articulate their visions of a utopian society. Nevertheless, in 1967, Burgess was invited by Punch magazine to describe his idea of a perfect society. Divided into various sub-categories, Burgess’s vision is at once idiosyncratic and provocative. It seems to prove the commonplace saying that one person’s utopia is another’s nightmare. The title of the article, perhaps no longer meaningful to all readers, is a play on the name of Anthony Eden, the former British Prime Minister, who resigned in 1957.
Anthony’s Eden by Anthony Burgess
Landscape
This Eden should be a smallish island, so that no place would be more than fifty minutes, by stopping train, from the coast. Alternatively express trains could, by a scheme of judicious breakdowns, reach the sea in just over two hours, provided that a superb lunch — preceded by very cold aperitifs — was served shortly after boarding. In the north, the coastline should be Tintagel-like; in the south, I want beaches rather like Blackpool’s, littered with Henry Moore pebbles and remarkable seashells. On the sea’s fringe, at both ends of the island, let there be a large variety of interesting but harmless marine creatures. Offshore there can be spouting whales, porpoises, and rumours of Portuguese men-of-war. The west and east coasts should be reserved for raffish foreign shipping, and there should be sailors’ bars on the quay. Inland, to the north let there be forests of conifers and lakes with fully licensed paddle-steamers; to the south, Scottish salmon-rivers with English oak-woods and downs. At dead centre of the island stands an unclimbable and haunted mountain.
Climate
This should be Irish, but with two summer months of almost intolerable heat with swift tropical dawns and sunsets. Rain should come mostly at night, but monsoon weather would be permitted at Christmas. Snowfalls should be moderate, and there must be no ice underfoot.
Inhabitants
The women should be blue-eyed Irish, fair Welsh, patrician Cantonese. Among the men let us have plenty of tall Slavs. There can be a number of temperamental English (Elizabethan type) of both sexes.
Diet
No great fuss should be made about the haute cuisine. Pride should be taken instead in provincial British dishes — Lancashire hot pot, steak and cowheel stew, meat and potato pie with pickled cabbage, English and Welsh cheeses, home-cooked chips, bottled sauces, light fruit tarts and heavy puddings. Alternatives could be limited to Madras curries and the entire Cantonese cuisine. For drink: very cold fresh milk, strong tea, iced lager, fuming Rhine and Portuguese wines, draught stout, monastic liqueurs.
Language
A kind of Elizabethan English could be the national tongue (the subtle distinctions between thou and you maintained), but auxiliaries would be encouraged, particularly Malay and Mandarin Chinese. Sanskrit and Gothic would be taught in schools. The Arabic alphabet would be used alongside the Roman and exclusively employed for street-signs.
Currency
Talk of the introduction of a decimal coinage to be taboo. The present British system [of 1967] would be used, with farthings, but rendered more complicated by the introduction of units divisible by nine, eleven and thirteen. If possible, the system to be enriched with groats, nobles, angels and the like. The gold standard.
Religion
Catholicism should provide the state religion, but with a hierarchy tolerant of heretics and lapsed members. Priests should be ascetic and learned or jovial and drunken. Low Mass at dawn, High Mass at noon — nothing in between. Plain chant, no organ. No use of the vernacular. Confessions by appointment: no queueing. Also Islam, with muezzins calling against the Angelus. Animism allowed, also serious spiritualism and witchcraft. Saints and pagan gods to be united in the one pantheon. Prayers to St Anthony, who finds lost things. Much superstition. All hymns to be Anglican.
Government
Let us have a humorous, cynical, hedonistic monarch — like Charles II or the Prince Regent or King Edward VII — whose powers, through personal craftiness, are less limited than the Constitution (roughly on the British model) officially allows. The Queen should be witty, beautiful, elegant, leader of fashion and patroness of the arts, fond of intrigues against pompous ministers. Let there be a bicameral legislature, with the House of Commons as it was in Pitt’s time, and no bishops (but artists, poets and philosophers) in the House of Lords. There can be a measure of corruption, so long as there is something Falstaffian about it. Rotten boroughs. No national plans, little legislation.
The Capital
This should be rather like the City of London, but with some Italian touches, more squares, tottering Dickensian taverns (though with refrigerators), obscure monuments, shady chambers, graveyards with fantastic epitaphs, Roman remains always being dug up. Wheeled traffic not allowed. Many public benches and open-air cafés with bootblacks and vendors of rubbish. Trees, tiny gardens. Strict licensing hours for the pubs (though regretful landlords) but bistros open till dawn. Many junk-shops and dusty, privately endowed libraries, neglected but full of curiosa. Bandstands and two squares for open-air dancing. Lighted Roman fountains. An eccentric Lord Mayor, pedantic about the City’s rights. Intricate civic ceremonies. Guild processions.
Architecture
This can be eclectic: Wren churches but also Byzantine mosques and a Gothic Guildhall. The private houses should be Regency on the outside but planless and winding within, with warrens of cellars and rooms that one did not know existed. Huge kitchens, and bathrooms out of Brideshead Revisited (there should be no great fetish about washing, incidentally). Electricity as well as gas and open fires and ranges. No central heating.
Art
Paintings should be mainly representational. Any kind of sculpture would be permissible, but public erections ought to be mainly equestrian and senatorial (statues to be of vague, forgotten but doubtless worthy figures, including clerics and minor poets). All major fiction should be picaresque and full of word-play and spurious erudition. Poetry should be practised in very strict forms. ‘Legitimate’ drama to favour the classical unities and appear as two distinct categories — gorgeous purple tragedy; obscene, satiric, rollicking, phallic farce. The lighter stage to be cultivated — music-hall and musical comedy on between-war models. The art of the cinema to be confined to low-budget experimentalism or blue films, to be exhibited in decaying church halls off the main streets. Neither radio nor television to be much encouraged, except for very old films shown on the latter after midnight, ostensibly for insomniacs. All music to be tonal. Chamber music and jazz to be played privately. No sentimental coddling of folk-music. No electronic musical instruments. Popular songs to have highly sophisticated lyrics. Ballet to be, as formerly, an aspect of opera.
Pastimes
Amateur sports, building brick follies, witty or affectionate drunkenness, tending large pets (cheetahs, hamadryads, etc.), insulting public figures over the telephone, studying the Royal Family, reading trash in bed, harmless punch-ups, race-meetings (well-stocked refreshment-tents, with lots of ice), theological controversy in pubs, shove-ha’penny on preternaturally polished boards, fruit-machines but no bingo except (in army messes) as housey-housey. Intricate romancing, but not too much raw sex.
Transport
Cars should be expensive, difficult to drive, and unable to travel at more than 15 miles per hour. They should have running-boards. Steam-trains, no Diesels. Airships like luxury hotels. Little airlines. Hansom cabs, decrepit taxis, single-decker tramcars with outside seats at each end. Ponies and traps with running Dalmatians. No bicycles.
Work
Light, little, but interesting.
Text © International Anthony Burgess Foundation, 2025. Not to be reproduced without permission.
Find out more
Buy A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (affiliate link).
Buy The Wanting Seed by Anthony Burgess (affiliate link).
Buy 1985 by Anthony Burgess (affiliate link).
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