{"id":1752,"date":"2012-10-19T19:47:47","date_gmt":"2012-10-19T18:47:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1377"},"modified":"2016-02-05T19:46:29","modified_gmt":"2016-02-05T18:46:29","slug":"fifty-years-of-a-clockwork-orange-reviewed-by-emma-shaw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=1752","title":{"rendered":"Fifty Years of A Clockwork Orange<\/em>, reviewed by Emma Shaw"},"content":{"rendered":"

Celebration: Fifty Years of A Clockwork Orange<\/em><\/a>, with Dominic Sandbrook, Thursday 18th<\/sup> October, 7.00pm, International Anthony Burgess Foundation.<\/p>\n

Words by Emma Shaw<\/p>\n

Last night, Dominic Sandbrook offered up a fiftieth birthday celebration of Anthony Burgess\u2019s most enduring work.\u00a0 Sandbrook provided a wide-ranging contextual history for both the book and Stanley Kubrick\u2019s film, released ten years later.\u00a0 The event was held at The International Anthony Burgess Foundation, housed in a listed former mill on Cambridge Street. \u00a0The setting for Burgess\u2019s archive offers a reminder of his industrial output\u2014A Clockwork Orange<\/em>, written in only three weeks, was one of six novels published by Burgess in 1962.<\/p>\n

From a table in the foyer, Waterstones sold copies of Sandbrook\u2019s books on the history of post-war Britain, setting up his credentials as a talking head \u00a0for those not familiar with his work on television and radio.\u00a0 Once inside the building, the plush red seats and eclectic mix of antiques dotted around the lecture hall looked oddly out of place against the exposed brickwork and aluminium ducting.\u00a0 I later discovered that the furniture and other curios were recovered from Burgess\u2019s homes in Italy and elsewhere.\u00a0 His piano was tucked discreetly behind the stage, shrouded beneath a black cover.<\/p>\n

On the way in, I was invited to sample an evil-looking beer produced by the sponsors of the event, Brentwood Brewing Company. \u00a0Chockwork Orange is an award winning dark ale, which at 6.5% could easily fuel a night of ultra-violence.\u00a0 Luckily, few members of the audience were brave enough to return for a second glass. \u00a0I can, however, recommend the chocolate brownies.<\/p>\n

Priming his audience for the nostalgia that followed, Sandbrook got down to business by revealing the seventies-style knitted tank top beneath his suit jacket.\u00a0 Skipping back a decade, he began his lecture with an analysis of how sixties Britain was transformed into an affluent consumer society.\u00a0 He offered an engaging mix of anecdotal detail (1962 is now fixed in my memory as the year in which Golden Wonder released their first flavoured potato crisp\u2013cheese and onion, since you ask) with acute insight into the anxieties that accompanied such a rapid period of change.<\/p>\n

Sandbrook gave an alternative representation of Britain in the Swinging Sixties as a conformist culture structured around a deeply conservative establishment. \u00a0It transpired that Burgess was not alone in saying he \u2018despised\u2019 the Beatles. \u00a0Having established his backdrop, Sandbrook argued that Burgess\u2019s direct inspiration for A Clockwork Orange<\/em> lay in \u2018his response to the forces that were reshaping British Society and, specifically, to the transformation of youth culture\u2019.\u00a0 Acknowledging the underlying question posed by the book as \u2018should we be free to choose evil or compelled to do good\u2019, he presented the novel as a response to contemporary anxiety about teenage rebellion, violence and social disorder.<\/p>\n

Sandbrook then segued into an account of the power cuts, stagflation and strikes that characterised seventies Britain.\u00a0 He described a society far closer to Burgess\u2019s dystopian view, where the violence described by Alex was acted out on the football terraces most Saturdays.\u00a0 Evidence of Burgess\u2019s resentment towards Kubrick and the film of A Clockwork Orange<\/em> was revealed by Burgess\u2019s words:\u00a0 \u2018Kubrick’s achievement swallowed mine whole, and yet I was responsible for what some called its malign influence on the young\u2019.\u00a0 Burgess was bitter that he, not Kubrick, was held responsible for the copycat violence supposedly provoked by the film: \u2018If a couple of nuns were raped in Berwick-on-Tweed, I would always get a telephone call from the newspapers.\u2019 \u00a0Sandbrook countered by making the case for Kubrick\u2019s film as essential in securing Burgess\u2019s legacy.<\/p>\n

Whilst the film has ensured the book has not been consigned to literary history as \u2018a period piece\u2019, an alternative account would credit Burgess\u2019s inspired invention of nadsat,<\/em> the language of Alex\u2019s narration, for the book\u2019s contemporary feel more than half a century after it was written.\u00a0 Nadsat <\/em>neatly avoids miring the book in dated language.\u00a0 Just as it allows Burgess to gloss Alex\u2019s diabolical violence and make it appear (almost) comical, it enables the book to skirt around the intervening decades of ever-changing gangland slang and thereby retain its freshness.<\/p>\n

The Foundation\u2019s Director, Dr Andrew Biswell, who began the evening by introducing Sandbrook returned to host the Q and A that followed.\u00a0 Sandbrook fielded questions from the audience who, as Alex might have said, were mainly of the older bourgeois type with a smattering of oomny devotchkas<\/em> and malchiks <\/em>scribbling furiously in their notebooks.\u00a0 Questions ranged from the marginalisation of women in the book to Burgess\u2019s views on Jimmy Savile (\u2018that disgusting man\u2019), before Biswell rounded up a thoroughly horrorshow<\/em> event.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Celebration: Fifty Years of A Clockwork Orange, with Dominic Sandbrook, Thursday 18th October, 7.00pm, International Anthony Burgess Foundation. Words by Emma Shaw Last night, Dominic Sandbrook offered up a fiftieth birthday celebration of Anthony Burgess\u2019s most enduring work.\u00a0 Sandbrook provided a wide-ranging contextual history for both the book and Stanley Kubrick\u2019s film, released ten years […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[16,283],"tags":[22,171],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nFifty Years of A Clockwork Orange, reviewed by Emma Shaw - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=1752\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Fifty Years of A Clockwork Orange, reviewed by Emma Shaw - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Celebration: Fifty Years of A Clockwork Orange, with Dominic Sandbrook, Thursday 18th October, 7.00pm, International Anthony Burgess Foundation. 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