Alan Burns

{{Infobox writer | image = | imagesize = | caption = | pseudonym = | birth_name = Alan Burns | birth_date = | birth_place = London | death_date = | death_place = London, England | occupation = Novelist, creative writing teacher, playwright | period = Late 1950s to mid-1980s | genre = Fictional prose | subject = | movement = Modernism | notableworks = Europe After the Rain, Babel| signature = | website = }} Alan Burns (29 December 1929 – 23 December 2013)"R.I.P.", Ansible 319, February 2014. was an English author and one of the key figures in the short-lived group of experimental writers working in Britain in the 1960s and early 1970s, which included writers such as B. S. Johnson, Christine Brooke-Rose, Ann Quin and Giles Gordon. Burns wrote eight novels, a play and the script for two short films (one in collaboration with B. S. Johnson), as well as several short pieces, a book of interviews with writers, articles and edited an American report on pornography and censorship for publication in the UK. Burns was one of the earliest teachers of creative writing as an academic discipline in Britain, appointed as the first writer in residence on the University of East Anglia's Creative Writing Master's programme and later he went on to teach this discipline in both Australia and the USA. Burns also worked with Peter Whitehead, writing Jeanette Cochrane, a short experimental film in a montage style, which featured early music from Pink Floyd and an appearance by Nico. Biography and creative works Alan Burns was born on 29 December 1929 to a middle-class family, the second of his parents' three sons. He attended Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood. Burns recounts his experiences at the school in fictionalised form in Buster, his first and most autobiographical novel. While at the school, Burns published an absurdist and satirical essay on Samuel Johnson in the school magazine, which he reuses in Buster. Burns subsequently did national service from 1949 to 1951 in the Royal Army Education Corps. He studied law at Middle Temple, and was called to the bar in 1956. He was assistant legal manager at Beaverbrook Newspapers from 1959 to 1962.Buster, Burns' debut novel, was published by John Calder in 1961. Largely autobiographical, it recounts a middle-class childhood spent during the Second World War and an adolescence and young adulthood in its aftermath.