Liana Burgess

Dec 7 2007 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

HER descent from Attila the Hun, on her mother’s side, was, close observers believed, rather less bumpy than her marriage to one of the most brilliant English novelists of the 20th century, though it could well be argued that he also suffered considerable bumpings along the way.

At the beginning, their relationship was confused because she thought that he was two people.

As a literary advisor to an Italian publisher, Liliana (Liana) Macellari read A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess and Inside Mr Enerby by Jospeh Kell. These two books, she felt, were outstanding and worthy of inclusion in the Bompiani Literary Almanac.

She wrote to both authors explaining that she was beside herself with joy after reading their work. Then she discovered that Joseph Kell was a pen-name of John Burgess Wilson, widely known as Anthony Burgess.

The couple met for dinner in Chiswick. She fell in love with his work, noting later that he was “never a good-looking man”. But, when combined with his admiration for her looks and her hatred of the Italian state and Roman Catholic Church, it was enough.

Their son Paulo Andrea (later Andrew Burgess Wilson) was born in 1964. Anthony’s first wife Llewela, who liked a drink, never knew of their relationship, but, after her death in 1968, they married – celebrating their freedom by setting off on an extended trip of Europe in a Dormobile van, during which she drove, often with a cavalier indifference to the Highway Code, while he typed in the back.

Liana was born in Porto Civitanova, Italy, to the Contessa Maria Lucrezia Pasi della Pergola, who had struggled to turn her artistic enthusiasm into good work, and her husband Gilberto Macellari, an occasional actor with wandering eyes.

At Bologna University, Liana cultivated her love of English literature. This carried her to the USA, where she met her first husband, Benjamin Johnson, the English translator of Italo Svevo’s short stories.

Liana, whose mother claimed the descent from Attila, was a brilliant and tough literary agent who also won acclaim for the Italian translations of her husband’s work. The couple settled in Monaco, where he died in 1993. Paulo died nine years later. Grief-stricken Liana, who had acquired properties across Europe, was sustained by the loyalty and kindness of devoted friends, who nursed her through lung cancer.

Liana Burgess, literary agent; born September 25, 1929,died December 3, 2007.