Coming attractions: Autumn 2024 at the Burgess
Events at the Anthony Burgess Foundation in September and October
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We are delighted to be hosting the Manchester launch of Christopher Isherwood Inside Out, described by David Hockney as ‘A first-rate biography of the man, the writer and the lover.’ Katherine Bucknell will talk about her illuminating new biography of Christopher Isherwood, one of the most prominent writers of the twentieth century, whose writings about Berlin in the 1930s inspired the musical Cabaret, and made him famous.
Using a wealth of unpublished material, Christopher Isherwood Inside Out reveals the drama and complexity of Isherwood’s interior world. It tells how the traumas of his father’s death in the First World War and his failure to protect his German lover from the Nazis were healed by his life as a monk in the 1940s, enabling him to commit to an open relationship in the 1950s, and to become the ‘grand old man’ of the gay rights movement in the 1970s.
Katherine Bucknell is the leading authority on the life and work of Christopher Isherwood. She has edited all three volumes of Isherwood’s diaries, covering the years 1939-83; his memoir, Lost Years; and a collection of letters between Isherwood and Don Bachardy. She is also the author of four novels. (More information)
Events at the Burgess Foundation in Manchester
Concerts: Opera Lab 2024 | Friday 6 September, 3.30pm + 4.30pm + 6.15pm + 7.30pm, £12 | A brand new 15-minute opera devised over ten days at the Burgess Foundation by the 2024 cohort of collaborative artists working with Manchester Contemporary Youth Opera. There will be four showings from which to choose, two of which will have an artist Q&A. (More information)
Talk: Newcomen presents Thomas Cooke of York by Darlah Thomas | Thursday 24 September, 6.30pm, free | Newcomen, the international society for history, engineering and technology, provides an insight into a Victorian instrument-maker with a worldwide following. A humble son of a shoemaker who rose to the top of the horological hierarchy. (More information)
Talk: Manchester Lit & Phil Presents ‘Made in Manchester’ with Brian Groom | Wednesday 25 September, 6:30pm, £15 | Roman soldiers, Chartism, corn laws and Gracie Fields. Brian Groom returns to the Manchester Lit & Phil to tell Manchester’s story from its earliest times, based on his new book, Made in Manchester: A People’s History of the City that Shaped the Modern World. (More information)
Literature: Poets & Players | Saturday 28 September, 2.30pm, free | A star-studded afternoon of live literature. Hear readings from T.S. Eliot Prize winner Sarah Howe, Forward Prize nominee Lorcán Black, and writer-in-residence at Manchester Cathedral, Tom Branfoot. Expect live music too. (More information)
The Anthony Burgess Foundation podcast
A new series of Ninety-Nine Novels, the podcast series celebrating Anthony Burgess’s favourite twentieth-century novels, will begin in September. Catch up with previous episodes by searching for the Burgess Foundation podcast, or start here: