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A Vision of Battlements
This is an alternate cover edition for 9781526122032
A Vision of Battlements is the first novel by the writer and composer Anthony Burgess, who was born in Manchester in 1917. Set in Gibraltar during the Second World War, the book follows the fortunes of Richard Ennis, an army sergeant and incipient composer who dreams of composing great music and building a new cultural world after the end of the war. Following the example of his literary hero, James Joyce, Burgess takes the structure of his book from Virgil's Aeneid. The result is, like Joyce's Ulysses, a comic rewriting of a classical epic, whose critique of the Army and the postwar settlement is sharp and assured.
The Irwell Edition is the first publication of Burgess's forgotten masterpiece since 1965. This new edition includes an introduction and notes by Andrew Biswell, author of a prize-winning biography of Anthony Burgess.
A Vision of Battlements is the first novel by the writer and composer Anthony Burgess, who was born in Manchester in 1917. Set in Gibraltar during the Second World War, the book follows the fortunes of Richard Ennis, an army sergeant and incipient composer who dreams of composing great music and building a new cultural world after the end of the war. Following the example of his literary hero, James Joyce, Burgess takes the structure of his book from Virgil's Aeneid. The result is, like Joyce's Ulysses, a comic rewriting of a classical epic, whose critique of the Army and the postwar settlement is sharp and assured.
The Irwell Edition is the first publication of Burgess's forgotten masterpiece since 1965. This new edition includes an introduction and notes by Andrew Biswell, author of a prize-winning biography of Anthony Burgess.
246 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1965
About the author
Anthony Burgess
359 books4,427 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Seriocomic novels of noted British writer and critic Anthony Burgess, pen name of John Burgess Wilson, include the futuristic classic A Clockwork Orange (1962).
He composed also a librettos, poems, plays, screens, and essays and traveled, broadcast, translated, linguist and educationalist. He lived for long periods in southeastern Asia, the United States of America, and Europe along Mediterranean Sea as well as England. His fiction embraces the Malayan trilogy ( The Long Day Wanes ) on the dying days of empire in the east. The Enderby quartet concerns a poet and his muse. Nothing like the Sun re-creates love life of William Shakespeare. He explores the nature of evil with Earthly Powers , a panoramic saga of the 20th century. He published studies of James Joyce, Ernest Miller Hemingway, Shakespeare, and David Herbert Lawrence. He produced the treatises Language Made Plain and A Mouthful of Air . His journalism proliferated in several languages. He translated and adapted Cyrano de Bergerac , Oedipus the King , and Carmen for the stage. He scripted Jesus of Nazareth and Moses the Lawgiver for the screen. He invented the prehistoric language, spoken in Quest for Fire . He composed the Sinfoni Melayu , the Symphony (No. 3) in C , and the opera Blooms of Dublin .
Seriocomic novels of noted British writer and critic Anthony Burgess, pen name of John Burgess Wilson, include the futuristic classic A Clockwork Orange (1962).
He composed also a librettos, poems, plays, screens, and essays and traveled, broadcast, translated, linguist and educationalist. He lived for long periods in southeastern Asia, the United States of America, and Europe along Mediterranean Sea as well as England. His fiction embraces the Malayan trilogy ( The Long Day Wanes ) on the dying days of empire in the east. The Enderby quartet concerns a poet and his muse. Nothing like the Sun re-creates love life of William Shakespeare. He explores the nature of evil with Earthly Powers , a panoramic saga of the 20th century. He published studies of James Joyce, Ernest Miller Hemingway, Shakespeare, and David Herbert Lawrence. He produced the treatises Language Made Plain and A Mouthful of Air . His journalism proliferated in several languages. He translated and adapted Cyrano de Bergerac , Oedipus the King , and Carmen for the stage. He scripted Jesus of Nazareth and Moses the Lawgiver for the screen. He invented the prehistoric language, spoken in Quest for Fire . He composed the Sinfoni Melayu , the Symphony (No. 3) in C , and the opera Blooms of Dublin .
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
July 19, 2013
Before Anthony took up his pen to produce a bibliography that would make the estate of V.C. Andrews weep into their Simpsons neckties, he dithered with music and teaching and to amuse himself, wrote a novel. Completed in 1949, drawered until the mid-60s (presumably released for a quick kerching), this army comedy is a clear piece of apprentice work, but shows incredible maturity and skill for a first-timer. As my choreographer Randy Jarrell once told me, “Some mens can swing, but some mens just hang.” When asked the meaning of this cryptic phrase, I later learned that he was arguing in favour of inborn talent over painstaking craft. Burgess could swing from the very first letter. To spruce up the release of this early work, the publisher added completely inappropriate illustrations while, despite being completely inappropriate, actually add a little amusement to the proceedings, despite being completely inappropriate. The love plots are laughable but the comedy, well, that stuff is laughable. Burgess would later write M/F, which I am correctly informed is complete bollocks.
February 19, 2018
Burgess wrote this novel - chronologically speaking, his first, but not first published - by way of exorcising his experiences in Gibraltar during WWII.
It is war fiction, but, to my surprise, not in the fashion of For Whom The Bell Tolls. There is very little fighting, and what exists are squabbles between fellow soldiers. Not newspaper headlines but day-to-day events of eating and getting drunk, and attending vocational classes that aim to prepare them for daily life and a job back home. The main character attempts to write and perform music with varying success, but mostly lack of. He also harbours ambivalent feelings about his wife, pines for a young woman, and finds altogether not entirely satisfactory comfort in the company of another. I'm normally not enthused by such plots but it's the language that holds me. I don't find many of the characters particularly sympathetic (although I like Julian in the funny way he seems to breeze through life with mild disbelief), but language is the clay that shapes the work, and Burgess is an accomplished potter in this respect. There are lines so lyrical they sing. If all art aspires to the condition of music, he's one of the few who has secured that comparison in literature. He is the reason this novel gets 4 stars.
There are levels of literariness to be pursued, but not knowing that the story is loosely structured on the pattern of The Aeneid is no hindrance. I know very little about music and close to nothing about soldiering, but there are some jokes that made me laugh. It's hard to believe that this is a first novel when there's so much in it.
This edition is simply the best edition a reader can hope for. It has everything I can think of: helpful notes, an introduction, and a couple of reflective essays written by the author on the book. The latter was fun to read. When I first turned to the back and discovered the notes I thought to myself: this is a lazy person's edition. I hope it stays in print.
It is war fiction, but, to my surprise, not in the fashion of For Whom The Bell Tolls. There is very little fighting, and what exists are squabbles between fellow soldiers. Not newspaper headlines but day-to-day events of eating and getting drunk, and attending vocational classes that aim to prepare them for daily life and a job back home. The main character attempts to write and perform music with varying success, but mostly lack of. He also harbours ambivalent feelings about his wife, pines for a young woman, and finds altogether not entirely satisfactory comfort in the company of another. I'm normally not enthused by such plots but it's the language that holds me. I don't find many of the characters particularly sympathetic (although I like Julian in the funny way he seems to breeze through life with mild disbelief), but language is the clay that shapes the work, and Burgess is an accomplished potter in this respect. There are lines so lyrical they sing. If all art aspires to the condition of music, he's one of the few who has secured that comparison in literature. He is the reason this novel gets 4 stars.
There are levels of literariness to be pursued, but not knowing that the story is loosely structured on the pattern of The Aeneid is no hindrance. I know very little about music and close to nothing about soldiering, but there are some jokes that made me laugh. It's hard to believe that this is a first novel when there's so much in it.
This edition is simply the best edition a reader can hope for. It has everything I can think of: helpful notes, an introduction, and a couple of reflective essays written by the author on the book. The latter was fun to read. When I first turned to the back and discovered the notes I thought to myself: this is a lazy person's edition. I hope it stays in print.
April 24, 2018
The story of an immature soul wrestling with the desires of the flesh.
Not as enthralling as I'd hoped - I'm always down for a bit of fun at the expense of the British Army but Burgess' writing is more bitter and less inviting than say, Waugh's military memoir-novel Sword of Honour.
Perhaps the story is uncomfortable because it is relatable. Burgess' protagonist Ennis is always falling into the same sins again and again. The way out of this misery is apparent but seemingly always a bridge too far.
Not as enthralling as I'd hoped - I'm always down for a bit of fun at the expense of the British Army but Burgess' writing is more bitter and less inviting than say, Waugh's military memoir-novel Sword of Honour.
Perhaps the story is uncomfortable because it is relatable. Burgess' protagonist Ennis is always falling into the same sins again and again. The way out of this misery is apparent but seemingly always a bridge too far.
July 4, 2026
Anthony Burgess has a great vocabulary (how many books do you know feature the word "callipygous?"), but here, in his semi-autobiographical tale of the final days of World War II, not in battle but on Gibraltar educating soldiers, this bountiful lexicon cannot save him. Nor can his allusions to Virgil (whom I have not read). He simply doesn't understand how to make this story of an underachieving creative type interesting, doesn't even seem to know what's compelling about it in the first place. Someone like Hemingway could have torn this up.
July 13, 2023
This book started off iffy for me but got so much better as I read it. I found Mr. Burgess' depiction of what a soldier does when not on the front lines and after the war ends very interesting. The main character seemed aimless and bored but yet could really do nothing about his situation until someone else told him.
November 27, 2025
Coming off like a cross between The Stuff to Give the Troops (Julian MacLaren Ross) and Catch 22 (but set in Gibraltar rather than Pianosa) and, um, Virgil, the novel details the war transitioning to peace and England moving from high Toryism to democratic socialism (you get the idea that Burgess rather disapproves of the latter).
December 19, 2018
Not his best work, but it foreshadows the writer Burgess would become: the sardonic wit and humor, language, philosophical and literary allusions, even the overall nature of the main character, are the foundation of future Burgess classics. Quite enjoyable.
August 3, 2020
3.5 stars
February 21, 2024
It's time for a reassessment of Burgess's career. He's not just the author of Clockwork Orange. He's great. This was the first novel he wrote and it's smart, entertaining and memorable.
December 5, 2013
This is Anthony Burgess' first novel, apparently he wrote it for fun over a vacation before having any serious intention of being a writer. The talented bastard . . .
November 17, 2015
This book had no dull moments, seemed to be effortlessly written, and was rly fucking funny. Didnt know what to expect, i picked it up for cheap on the sidewalk, delighted by the universe once again
August 5, 2026
Really enjoyed this thoughtful, funny, sad book.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews