{"id":5108,"date":"2017-02-25T10:30:37","date_gmt":"2017-02-25T09:30:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ounews.co\/?p=5108"},"modified":"2017-02-25T10:30:37","modified_gmt":"2017-02-25T09:30:37","slug":"clockwork-orange-ultraviolence-russian-spies-fake-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/news\/arts-social-sciences\/art-literature-music\/clockwork-orange-ultraviolence-russian-spies-fake-news\/","title":{"rendered":"A Clockwork Orange: ultraviolence, Russian spies and fake news"},"content":{"rendered":"

The writer Anthony Burgess is most famous for his novel, A Clockwork Orange<\/a>. This month marks the centenary of the writer\u2019s birth and his dystopian vision still casts a long shadow over popular culture. But what is perhaps more intriguing is how the book was once drawn into a world of Russian espionage, fake news and paranoia.<\/p>\n

During his lifetime, Burgess wrote over 30 novels, 25 non-fiction books, three symphonies and countless other musical works. But 55 years after its publication, it\u2019s still A Clockwork Orange which has the most enduring influence.<\/p>\n

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Anthony Burgess.<\/span>
\nMark Hillary\/Flickr<\/a>, CC BY<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One of the more unusual examples of this influence was the novel\u2019s appropriation by the espionage community. During the 1970s, the title supposedly became the codename for an alleged campaign<\/a> to undermine the prime minister, Harold Wilson. Prompted, apparently, by fears that Wilson was a Soviet agent and that he\u2019d been placed in office after the KGB had poisoned the previous Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell.<\/p>\n

Elements within the British secret service are alleged to have bugged his staff\u2019s phones, burgled their houses and instigated a campaign to spread false rumours about him through the media. All of this was intended as a precursor to a coup<\/a> which would see the army seize Heathrow airport and Buckingham Palace and put an interim prime minster in place.<\/p>\n

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A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess.<\/span>
\nSimon Zirkunow\/Flickr<\/a>, CC BY<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The symbolism of the use of this title \u2013 of a novel about state brainwashing and civil disorder \u2013 is inventive, to say the least. It also has a strange resonance today, where again there\u2019s rampant speculation about the way fake news and the use of \u201ckompromat\u201d (compromising material) is being used to manipulate Donald Trump who some fear is under the control of the Russian secret service.<\/p>\n