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Anthony Burgess in Malta

11/10/2011

4 Comments

 
Picture
 There seems to be very scant information available on Anthony Burgess's brief stay in Malta during the years 1968-70. Certainly it can't have been a very happy stay here - in the first pages of his book Earthly Powers I seem to recall that he gives the narrow-minded representatives of Maltese officialdom quite a bit of stick - a very embarrassing read for a native of these Islands.

By all accounts the General Post Office and the Customs people (or more likely both) at the time frequently withheld books posted to him on censorship grounds - when Burgess needed to read the same books to earn a living from reviewing them.

“Certain books were not allowed in,” Burgess wrote. “At Luqa airport a team scrutinised the British newspapers and cut out or inked over underwear advertisements or bathing beauties which might inflame Maltese youth. One could sometimes buy a Daily Mirror that collapsed into scissored tatters.”

Censorship (then as now) was arbitrary, embarrassingly narrow minded and non consistent. This is hardly surprising seeing as the police in supposedly twenty-first century Malta can still request to vet potentially offensive lyrics for the Nadur Carnival, and dressing up as a nun or priest at the same event can still land one in court. Then there was the infamous incident where the same police requested that naked mannequins in a Mosta shop be dressed up… 


There is no memorial plaque on any house in Lija recording his stay - and I am saddened by the fact that the Lija Local Council hasn't thought of it either. Surely any present owner of the house would not object to a simple informative plaque - with one eye on the property’s potential resale value....  

So basically the author who gave us a whole new language replete with devotchkas, litsos and ptitsas in A Clockwork Orange is all but forgotten by his adoptive Maltese village. A real shame. 

The house where Burgess lived is apparently No. 168, Main Street, Lija (the house on the left in the photo above), described by the author as “a rather fine house built in 1798, the year of Napoleon’s invasion. It was floored in marble, had an impressive piano nobile, three bathrooms and four toilets, and a garden with its own artesian well and many lemon and orange trees. It had a bad reputation, so we heard in a local bar, because its former owner had hurled himself from the roof in a fit of depression”

I am grateful to Australian author Matthew Asprey for supplying important information (not least identifying Burgess’s house) for this revised blog entry.  Matthew has a very interesting article about following Burgess’s footsteps in Malta and Rome here

http://matthewasprey.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/peripatetic-burgess-2009-anthony-burgess-in-malta-and-rome/

(This blog post was revised on 24/12/2011)
4 Comments
Geoffrey grigson
13/12/2011 07:44:25 am

Blog from a small island -- inspired title
All the best

Reply
Matthew Asprey link
20/12/2011 03:35:44 pm

See my travel article on Burgess's houses in Malta (and Rome) in the 2009 edition of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation's 'End of the World Newsletter'. I visited the neighbourhood in Lija and spoke to the neighbours. Alas no plaque reading:

ANTHONY BURGESS, BRITISH NOVELIST, LIVED HERE UNTIL EVICTED BY THE GOVERNMENT OF MALTA IN APRIL 1974.

http://www.anthonyburgess.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/01-newsletter-060709.pdf

Reply
Steve Bonello
21/12/2011 10:22:01 am

Thanks Matthew - I read your article on following the writer's footsteps and seems I got the wrong house photo. Will update with a correct pic next time I'm out walking to the next village...

Reply
Marie Benoit link
15/4/2015 02:52:14 pm

I knew the Burgesses well. I had interviewed Anthony for the Sunday Times of Malta, mostly about censorship in Malta, since I was a member of the Censorship Reform Group. He had given an excellent talk at the University of Malta following my interview. He spoke about censorship... so many people had turned up. I don't remember a talk being so well attended. He was brilliant. I still have a letter of recommendation from him to the Denoel French publishers. Also a couple of his books which he signed for me. For the premier of A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick's film they invited me to Claridges where they were staying and we drank Black Velvet all evening together with his Italian wife Liana. I left for my studies abroad and one day, when on holiday in Malta they called me and asked me to sell their house in Lija. I had no idea how to go about it. eventually Cassar and Cooper sold it for them... I then lost track of them. I enjoyed their company. He was an excellent cook too. I agree that there should be a plaque on their house I Lija. He is one of the giants of literature and we gave him a hard time censoring his own books.

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