Todd Haines collection

Anthony Dymoke Powell (1905–2000), writer, was born on 21 December 1905 at 44 Ashley Gardens, Westminster, London, the only child of Lieutenant-Colonel Philip Lionel William Powell (1882–1959) CBE DSO, of the Welch regiment, and Maud Mary (1867–1954), second daughter of Edmund Lionel Wells-Dymoke, whose family owned land in Lincolnshire. A passionate genealogist, who said his hobby underlined ‘the vast extent of human oddness’ (Powell, Infants of the Spring, 2), Powell claimed descent from Rhys ap Gruffydd (1132–1197), ruler of south Wales. Powell considered himself, therefore, Welsh.

Powell started his education in 1916 at New Beacon Preperatory in Kent, followed by Eton, followed finally by Balliol College, Oxford. He left Oxford in 1926, with a third in History, and took a job at the publishing house, Duckworth, where part of his job was to read unsolicited manuscripts. These manuscripts, along with the work of Hemingway, influenced his writing.

His first novel, Afternoon Men (1931), was described as the party novel to end all party novels. He then wrote Venusburg (1932), and A View from Death (1933). In December 1934 he married Lady Violet Georgiana Pakenham. Though in the military during WWII, he never saw any action. His greatest work is a twelve-volume novel entitled A Dance to the Music of Time. His contemporary Evelyn Waugh likened Powell's huge cast to ‘a continuous frieze in high relief, deep cut and detailed’ (E. Waugh, Essays, Articles and Reviews, 1983, 548).

For Powell, literary art was like alchemy, a mysterious indefinable process by which the commonplace was transmuted. But art alone was not enough. Writing a novel, so he said on several occasions, was ‘appallingly hard work’ and there were times when, like Kipling (a favourite of his), he would get up from his chair feeling he would never be able to write another line. But of course there he would be next morning, in front of the typewriter. It was all a question of guts.

Powell was a conscientious and prolific literary journalist. From 1947 until 1952 he supervised fiction on the Times Literary Supplement, leaving to become literary editor of Punch under Malcolm Muggeridge, who had recommended the Music of Time to Powell's publisher, Heinemann. Powell was created CBE in 1956 and in 1958 his novel At Lady Molly's won the James Tait Black memorial prize. Also in 1958 he left Punch and for the next thirty years reviewed a book every other week in the Daily Telegraph. He also wrote a good deal about art, in which he took as much pleasure as in writing. From 1962 until 1976 he was a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery, which contains a drawing of him by Hubert Freeth, and a painting by his brother-in-law Henry Lamb. Powell was also drawn by Augustus John, Nina Hamnett, and Adrian Daintrey.

In 1974 Powell was made an honorary fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, and awarded a DLitt at the University of Wales and several other universities. Temporary Kings, the penultimate volume of the Music of Time, won the W. H. Smith award. Powell was made a Companion of Honour in 1988. Two large collections of his essays and reviews, Miscellaneous Verdicts and Under Review, were published in 1990 and 1991.

[Source: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, "Anthony Powell," by Michael Barber]