Anthony Powell | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Powell in 1934 | |
| Born | Anthony Dymoke Powell (1905-12-21)21 December 1905 London, England |
| Died | 28 March 2000(2000-03-28) (aged 94) Whatley, Somerset, England |
| Occupation | Novelist |
| Notable works | A Dance to the Music of Time |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 2, includingTristram |
Anthony Dymoke PowellCH CBE (/ˈpoʊəl/POH-əl;[1] 21 December 1905 – 28 March 2000) was an English novelist best known for his 12-volume workA Dance to the Music of Time, published between 1951 and 1975.[2] It is on the list of longest novels in English.
Powell's major work has remained in print continuously and has been the subject of television and radio dramatisations. In 2008,The Times newspaper named Powell among their list of "the 50 greatestBritish writers since 1945".[3]
Powell was born inWestminster, the son of Lieutenant-Colonel Philip Lionel William Powell (1882–1959), of theWelch Regiment, and Maud Mary (died 1954), daughter of Edmund Lionel Wells-Dymoke, of The Grange,East Molesey, Surrey. Wells-Dymoke was a descendant of a land-owning family inLincolnshire, hereditaryChampions to monarchs since the reign ofRichard II of England. They had married into the family of theBarons Marmion, who first held the position.[4] The Powell family descended from ancient Welsh kings and chieftains.[5] Anthony Powell had a strong interest in genealogy;[6] he conducted extensive research into the Powell family over many years, establishing a paternal descent fromGwriad ap Elidyr — himself a descendant ofCoel Hen according to theGenealogies from Jesus College MS 20 and other sources — viaRhys ap Gruffydd to the satisfaction of the heralds of theCollege of Arms, who in 1964 granted him use of the ancient Powell arms. This pedigree was included inBurke's Landed Gentry.[7][8][9]
Because of his father's career and the First World War, the family moved several times, and mother and son sometimes lived apart from Powell's father. Powell attended Gibbs's pre-preparatory day-school for a brief time. He was then sent toNew Beacon School nearSevenoaks, which was popular with military families. Early in 1919, Powell passed theCommon Entrance Examination forEton, where he started that autumn. There, he befriended fellow pupil Henry Yorke, later to become known as novelistHenry Green. At Eton, Powell spent much of his spare time at the Studio, where a sympathetic art master encouraged him to develop his talent as a draughtsman and his interest in the visual arts. In 1922, he became a founding member of the Eton Society of Arts. The society's members produced an occasional magazine calledThe Eton Candle.
In the autumn of 1923, Powell went up toBalliol College, Oxford. Soon after his arrival, he was introduced to theHypocrites' Club. Outside that club, he came to knowMaurice Bowra, then a young don atWadham College. During his third year, Powell lived out of college, sharing rooms with Henry Yorke. Powell travelled on the Continent during his holidays. He was awarded a third-class degree at the end of his academic years.
Upon his arrival in London after Oxford, part of Powell's social life centred around attendance at formal debutante dances at houses inMayfair andBelgravia. He renewed acquaintance withEvelyn Waugh, whom he had known at Oxford, and was a frequent guest for Sunday supper at Waugh's parents' house. Waugh introduced him to theGargoyle Club, which gave him experience in London's Bohemia. He got to know paintersNina Hamnett andAdrian Daintrey, who were neighbours inFitzrovia, and composerConstant Lambert, who remained a good friend until Lambert's death in 1951.[10]
In 1934, he marriedLady Violet Pakenham. In 1952, they moved to The Chantry, a country home inWhatley, west ofFrome, Somerset.[11][12]
Powell was appointed aCommander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the1956 Birthday Honours,[13] and in 1973, he declined an offer ofknighthood. He was appointedMember of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in the1988 New Year Honours.[14] He served as a trustee of theNational Portrait Gallery from 1962 to 1976.[15] With Lady Violet, he travelled to the United States, India, Guatemala, Italy, and Greece.
The individuals to whom Powell dedicated his books and memoirs provide the context of his range of friends and literary connections, includingJohn Bayley (writer),Robert Conquest,Henry d'Avigdor-Goldsmid,Antonia Fraser,Roy Jenkins,Hugh Massingberd,Arthur Mizener, andEdith Sitwell.[16][17]
Powell's health declined in his later years after multiple strokes. On 28 March 2000, he died at The Chantry at the age of 94.[11][18]
Powell came to work in London during the autumn of 1926 and lived at various London addresses for the next 25 years. He worked in a form of apprenticeship at the publishersGerald Duckworth and Company inCovent Garden, where he brought outA Tower of Skulls: a Journey through Persia and Turkish Armenia byGerald Reitlinger. Powell left Duckworth employ in 1936 after protracted negotiations about title, salary, and working hours.[19] He next took a job as ascreenwriter at theWarner Bros. studio inTeddington, where he remained for six months.[20] He made an abortive attempt to find employment in Hollywood as a screenwriter in 1937. He next found work reviewing novels forThe Daily Telegraph and memoirs and autobiographies forThe Spectator.
Upon the outbreak of the Second World War, Powell, at age 34, joined the British Army as asecond lieutenant, making him more than 10 years older than most of his fellow subalterns, not at all well prepared for military life, and lacking in experience. Powell joined the Welch Regiment and was stationed in Northern Ireland at the time of air raids in Belfast. His superiors found uses for his talents, resulting in a series of transfers that brought him to special training courses designed to produce a nucleus of officers to deal with the problems of military government after the Allies had defeated the Axis powers. He eventually secured an assignment with theIntelligence Corps and additional training. His military career continued with a posting to theWar Office inWhitehall, where he was attached to the section known as Military Intelligence (Liaison), overseeing relations with, and the basic material needs of, foreign troops in exile, specifically the Czechs, later the Belgians and Luxembourgers, and later still the French. Later for a short time he was posted to theCabinet Office, to serve on the Secretariat of theJoint Intelligence Committee, securing promotions along the way.
For his service in the Army, he received two General Service medals as well as the 1944France and Germany Star for escorting a group of Allied military attaches from Normandy to Montgomery's 21st Army Group Tactical HQ in November 1944 three miles from Roermond, Holland then held by the Germans. For representing the interests of foreign armies in exile as a liaison officer he received the following decorations: theOrder of the White Lion (Czechoslovakia), Oaken Crown (Luxembourg),Order of Leopold II (Belgium), andLuxembourg War Cross (Croix de Guerre-Luxembourg).[21]
After his demobilisation at the end of the war, writing became his sole career. Despite a holiday trip to the Soviet Union in 1936, he remained unsympathetic to the popular-front, leftist politics of many of his literary and critical contemporaries. ATory, Powell nonetheless maintained a certain scepticism towards the right as well, often associating withGeorge Orwell andMalcolm Muggeridge. He was wary of right-wing groups and suspicious of inflated rhetoric.[22] He organised Orwell's funeral together with Muggeridge.[23]
Powell marriedLady Violet Pakenham (1912–2002),[24] sister ofLord Longford, on 1 December 1934 at All Saints, Ennismore Gardens,Knightsbridge. Powell and his wife moved to 1 Chester Gate inRegent's Park, London, where they remained for 17 years.[25] Their first son,Tristram, was born in April 1940, but Powell and his wife spent most of the war years apart while he served in theWelch Regiment and later in theIntelligence Corps.[26] A second son, John, was born in January 1946.[27]
On 30 April 2018, Powell's granddaughterGeorgia Powell marriedHenry Somerset, 12th Duke of Beaufort.[28]
Powell's first novel,Afternoon Men, was published byDuckworth in 1931, with Powell supervising its production himself. The same firm published his next three novels,Venusberg (1932),From a View to a Death (1933) andAgents and Patients (1936) two of them after Powell had left the firm. The cover design of these three were byMisha Black.
During his time in California, Powell contributed several articles to the magazineNight and Day, edited byGraham Greene. Powell wrote a few more occasional pieces for the magazine until it ceased publication in March 1938. Powell completed his fifth novel,What's Become of Waring, in late 1938 or early 1939. After being turned down by Duckworth, it was published byCassell in March of that year. The book sold fewer than a thousand copies.
Anticipating the difficulties of creative writing during wartime, Powell began to assemble material for a biography of 17th-century writerJohn Aubrey. His army career, though, forced him to postpone even that biographical work. When the war ended, Powell resumed work on Aubrey, completing the manuscript ofJohn Aubrey and His Friends in May 1946, though it only appeared in 1948 after difficult negotiations and arguments with publishers. He then edited a selection of Aubrey's writings that appeared the following year.
Powell returned to novel writing, and began to ponder a longnovel sequence. Over the next 30 years, he produced his major work:A Dance to the Music of Time. The title of the multivolume series is taken from thepainting of the same name byPoussin, which hangs in theWallace Collection.[29] The cycle of novels, narrated by a protagonist with experiences and perspectives similar to Powell's own, follows the trajectory of the author's own life, offering a vivid portrayal of the intersection of bohemian life with high society between 1921 and 1971. Its characters, many modelled loosely on real people, surface, vanish, and reappear throughout the sequence but Powell claimed that it was not aroman à clef. The characters are drawn from the upper classes, their marriages and affairs, and their bohemian acquaintances.[30] Powell was awarded the 1957James Tait Black Memorial Prize for the fourth volume,At Lady Molly's. The eleventh volume,Temporary Kings, received theW. H. Smith Prize in 1974.[31]
In parallel with his creative writing, Powell served as the primary fiction reviewer for theTimes Literary Supplement. He served as literary editor ofPunch from 1953 to 1959. From 1958 to 1990, he was a regular reviewer forThe Daily Telegraph, resigning after a vitriolic personal attack on him by Auberon Waugh appeared in that newspaper.[32] He also reviewed occasionally forThe Spectator. Many of Powell's book reviews were republished in two volumes of critical essays,Miscellaneous Verdicts (1990) andUnder Review (1992).[33]
Between 1976 and 1982, Powell published four volumes of memoirs with the overall title ofTo Keep the Ball Rolling,[34] followed by two more novels:O, How the Wheel Becomes It! (1983) andThe Fisher King(1986).
Several volumes of Powell'sJournals, covering 1982 to 1992, appeared between 1995 and 1997. HisWriter's Notebook was published posthumously in 2001, and a third volume of critical essays,Some Poets, Artists, and a Reference for Mellors, appeared in 2005.
Alan Furst, an author ofspy novels, has noted of him, "Powell does everything a novelist can do, from flights of aesthetic passion to romance to comedy high and low. His dialogue is extraordinary; often terse, pedestrian and perfect, each character using three or four words. Anthony Powell taught me to write; he has such brilliant control of the mechanics of the novel."[35]
Powell created collages during his writing life. His greatest achievement, the collage in the Chantry, has been characterized as "a monstrous collage of a size and surrealistic disturbance."[36]
The collage took decades to create. It has been digitised and partially reproduced inAnthony Powell: Dancing to the Music of Time as endpapers.[37] A 360-degree panorama is viewable at the website:Powell's "Boiler Room" Collage at The Chantry.
In 2019, the Collage was photographed by Tim Beddow and featured on the cover ofThe World of Interiors, aCondé Nast magazine.[38] In 2021Christopher Matthew described it as "One of the most elaborate collages I have ever encountered covering not only the walls and the ceiling, but even the water pipes."[39]
In 2025, writing inTelegraph Luxury with many photos,Harry Mount observed, "the collage is a Sistine Chapel of literary Britain."[40] Powell's great-granddaughter, Hope Coke, wrote an illustrated essay about the boiler room collage inThe Oldie.[41]
Dance was adapted byHugh Whitemore for a television miniseries during the autumn of 1997, and broadcast in the UK onChannel 4. The novel sequence was earlier adapted by Graham Gauld andFrederick Bradnum for aBBC Radio 4 26-part series broadcast between 1978 and 1981. In the radio version, the part of Jenkins as narrator was played byNoel Johnson. A second radio dramatisation by Michael Butt was broadcast during April and May 2008.
In 1984, Powell was awardedThe Hudson Review'sBennett Award, to honour 'a writer of significant achievement whose work has not received the full recognition to which it is entitled' and the Ingersoll Foundation'sT. S. Eliot Award for Creative Writing.[42]
In 1995, Powell was awarded an honorary degree (Doctor of Letters) from theUniversity of Bath.[43]
In 2000 scholars founded TheAnthony Powell Society to advance for the public benefit, education and interest in his life and works. The Society publishes quarterlyThe Anthony Powell Newsletter and the journal,Secret Harmonies.
A centenary exhibition in commemoration of Powell's life and work was held at the Wallace Collection, London, from November 2005 to February 2006.[44]
Smaller exhibitions were held in 2005 and 2006 at Eton College,Cambridge University, theGrolier Club in New York City, andGeorgetown University in Washington, DC.
Hilary Spurling, a newspaper colleague, had written at Powell's request in 1977Invitation to the Dance: A Guide to Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time, and in 2017 published his biography,Anthony Powell: Dancing to the Music of Time.[45][46][47]
ABlue plaque was mounted on 16 September 2023 at 1 Chester Gate London NW1 where Powell began writingA Dance to the Music of Time. The Anthony Powell Society organised the ceremony.[48][49]
Memoirs
A one-volume abridgment, called simplyTo Keep the Ball Rolling, was published in 1983.
Diaries
