Roger Lewis
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Roger Lewis (born 26 February 1960) is the biographer of Anthony Burgess. He has also published books on Laurence Olivier, Peter Sellers and Charles Hawtrey.
[edit] Biography
Lewis was educated at the University of St. Andrews and Magdalen College, Oxford. He is a former Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford. He lives in Worcester and Malvern.
[edit] Lewis on Burgess
Lewis's controversial work Anthony Burgess was published in 2002. Critics could not decide whether it was an out-and-out hatchet job, a complicated form of tribute, or both.
Confronted by a Dutch interviewer, Lewis himself claimed that the book was indeed a tribute to Burgess; that he had intended to create an authentically Burgessian biography — full of footnotes, showing off its scholarship, and puce with rage and fervour. His judgement that Burgess was "a great writer who never wrote a great novel" sums up his frustration that a man of such range and talent seemed dedicated more to sheer quantity of output than to quality; and he laments — along with many of AB's other friends — that the gentle, generous John Wilson felt the need to create — and hide behind — the bombastic, monstrous "Anthony Burgess".
