A terrifying and marvellous book.

A brilliant novel . . . a tour-de-force in nastiness, an inventive primer in total violence, a savage satire on the distortions of the single and collective minds.

I do not know of any other writer who has done as much with language as Mr Burgess has done here - the fact that this is also a very funny book may pass unnoticed.

Burgess’s dystopian fantasy still fascinates as it clocks up 50 years

The 50th anniversary of Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange is celebrated this weekend with the publication of a handsome new hardback edition (the edges of its paper are orange!) by Random House (£20). It is compiled and edited by Andrew Biswell – Burgess's biographer – and has a foreword by Martin Amis, as well as unpublished material including a 1972 interview with Burgess, the prologue to his 1986 A Clockwork Orange: A Play With Music, and his annotated 1961 typescript of the novel, complete with his doodles in the margins. His picture of an orange with a spring poking out of it is particularly special

We might therefore suppose that Burgess would appreciate the publication of a “restored edition” of A Clockwork Orange (Heinemann, £20; US, W. W. Norton, $24.95) to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of his best-known work. Expertly edited by Andrew Biswell, and including a foreword by Martin Amis and a wealth of supplementary materials – explanatory notes, an expanded glossary of Nasdat, contemporary reviews by Kingsley Amis and Malcolm Bradbury among others, essays by Burgess and the “Prologue” and “Epilogue” to his musical stage version (1987) – the volume grants Burgess the kind of salutatory treatment he bestowed on others.

The perfect holiday read

Wherever your seaside haunt this book is one to pack

A real mine of information. Thoroughly recommended