New Malaysian link runs like clockwork

An international exchange is being planned after a successful research initiative by an Edge Hill University academic.

Dr Rob Spence, Associate Head of the Department of English and History, is an expert on author Anthony Burgess (1917 - 1993), who is probably most famous for his controversial novel A Clockwork Orange.

Following two trips by Dr Spence to Malaysia, where Burgess worked as a teacher, one of the country's own literary scholars is coming to Edge Hill. Dr Mohamad Rashidi Mohd Pakri, a lecturer at the Universiti Sains Malaysia, will visit the campus for six months from May next year.

Dr Spence said: "Rashidi will be participating in our programmes here at Edge Hill, as well as furthering his research. We are very pleased to host this visit and we hope that it will lead to further international staff exchanges and more interaction in the future."

Dr Spence was invited to give a talk on Burgess for Malay College Old Boys' Association in 2008. The writer had worked at the prestigious institution in the 1950s. It is now known as the ‘Eton of the East' and its alumni include kings, sultans and prime ministers.

Following this successful trip, Dr Spence helped organise the third symposium of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, which brought together the world's foremost Burgess scholars in Kuala Lumpur this summer. The foundation was established to preserve and disseminate the work of Manchester-born Burgess, and encourage and support scholarly interest in his life and works.

Dr Spence's latest research paper is entitled Half Birkenhead, half Babylon: Burgess and the Cold war. It examines Burgess's exploration of the world of espionage, comically in Honey for the Bears and more seriously in Tremor of Intent. It will be published in a Special Edition on 1950s and 1960s British fiction in the Yearbook of English Studies.