Liliana Macellari

Liliana "Liana" Macellari (September 25 1929 – December 3 2007) was born at Porto Civitanova, Marche, Italy, and was the daughter of photographer and actor Gilberto Macellari and Contessa Lucrezia Pasi della Pergola.

After studying in Bologna and America, she married translator Benjamin Johnson in 1953. They divorced in 1967 and in 1968 she married novelist Anthony Burgess.

After they married, Burgess acknowledged Liana's son Paolo Andrea as his own ("The Times" December 13, 2007). However, the "Times" confirms in the same article a fact revealed in the Roger Lewis biography (Faber and Faber, 2002, page 339), namely that the father was identified in Paolo Andrea’s August 9th, 1964 birth certificate as Roy Lionel Halliday, an ex-boyfriend of Liana’s. Halliday is described in the certificate as a teacher, though in a recent "Telegraph" obituary of Liana he is called an “unemployed drifter”. Nevertheless, all of the first-hand witnesses who provided material for Andrew Biswell's biography, The Real Life of Anthony Burgess (2005), agree that Burgess was indeed Paolo Andrea's father and the presence of Halliday's name on the birth certificate was a hoax intended to protect Burgess's first wife, Llewela (also known as Lynne), to whom he was still married when the child was born. Paolo Andrea (also known as Andrew Burgess Wilson) died in London in 2002 at the age of 37.

A translator and writer in her own right, Liana also acted as Burgess' literary agent, and translated his works. She also completed the first translation into Italian of Lawrence Durrell's novel Justine in 1959, three years before Burgess wrote A Clockwork Orange.

After Burgess died she helped found and establish the Anthony Burgess Center in Angers, and the Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester.

References

*Burgess, A You've Had Your Time, Being the Second Part of the Confessions of Anthony Burgess (1990)
*Uncredited Obituary "The Times" December 13, 2007 p71
*Uncredited Obituary, "The Daily Telegraph", 5 December 2007
*Andrew Biswell, The Real Life of Anthony Burgess (London: Picador, 2005)