Of little value but the sort of stuff we carry around in our heads.
Towards the end of "Earthly Powers" the characters meet in the Royal Oak. The rector arrives and greets a number of the pub goers by name (Mr Amos, Mr Catt and Mr Willard). One of these people works for the Open University, not just someone of that name but someone who knew Anthony Burgess and Burgess immortalised him in the book.
3 careful considerations:
Nigel - as a Burgessian, I'm v. interested in that. Who is the one thus commemorated?
(I'm just finishing my Burgess book for Manchester University Press. I'll also be at the inagural conference of the AB Foundation in Manchester next month.)
Wow! I only mentioned that as I'm rereading EP having just finished in yet another wallow in "Any Old Iron" (my current copy still has a price sticker in DM so it must be at least 14 years old because that's when I lived in Germany). More "associative links"?
Mr Catt grew to be Staff Tutor for FELS in R13.
In "Any Old Iron" a character lives on Dickenson Road in Rusholme, I used to walk down Dickenson Road every weekend going between my grandmother's home in the shadow of Maine Road (Caythorpe Street) and my parent's home in Longsight.
Hurry up with the book as it's just gone on my "wish list" :-)
Burgess was born in Harpurhey - I spent my formative years literally yards from his old house on Carisbrook St. He then moved to Longsight and then Moss Side. A brief intro to Burgess (by moi) is at the Literary Encyclopedia web site - litencyc.com. If you go to the French site of the Burgess Centre at Angers, you can see a report of the last symposium, which briefly featured me - I'm even pictured on the extreme left ofg one of the photos. It's at http://bu.univ-angers.fr/EXTRANET/AnthonyBURGESS/colloque2/colloque2CR.html
When I get home, I'll have to check if Mr Catt figures in the autobiographical work.
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