Born into a family of musicians – his mother a music-hall singer, his father a pianist in silent cinemas – Anthony Burgess became interested in music at an early age. A composer long before he became a writer, he gained a wide knowledge of the classi...

"I invented jazz in 1902", said Jelly Roll Morton. He was in the right place at the right time – New Orleans at the turn of the century – so in a sense his claim is as good as anyone else's; but jazz actually evolved from a complex variety of sources...