Profile of Anthony Powell on Famous Like Me

Anthony Dymoke Powell (December 21, 1905 - March 28, 2000) is a writer most remembered for his A Dance to the Music of Time duodecalogy published between 1951 and 1975. According to his memoirs, Powell rhymes with Lowell (not towel).

Born in Westminster, England, to Philip and Maud Powell, he studied at Eton College and Balliol College, Oxford, from which latter institution he graduated with a third class (honours) degree. Among his contemporaries were Evelyn Waugh, Henry Green, Graham Greene, and George Orwell. In 1926, Powell took a job at the well-known London publishers Duckworth & Co, eventually rising to be an editor. He married Lady Violet Pakenham (March 13, 1912-January 12, 2002), third daughter of the 5th Earl of Longford, on December 1, 1934, at All Saints, Ennismore Gardens, Knightsbridge, and after a honeymoon in Greece they settled into a two-floor flat at No 47 Great Ormond Street.

He moved to Hollywood, California in 1936, a few years after publishing his first novel, to join Warner Brothers motion-picture studios on a six month contract as scriptwriter. There, he became acquainted with F Scott Fitzgerald who was also writing for film at the time. A year later, he returned to England where he became a regular contributor to The Spectator and the Daily Telegraph newspaper while devoting as much time as possible to writing novels until the outbreak of World War II. His first son, Tristram, was born in April 1940; both wife and son moved to the country to avoid the dangers of London during the war. (Their second son, John, was born in January 1946.)

During the war, Powell first served with the 1/5 Welch, a Territorial battalion, and then later in the Military Intelligence Corps as a Liaison Officer with the Allied Forces, in particular Belgium and Czechoslovakia. During this time, he started work on his acclaimed biography of John Aubrey which was published in 1948.

At the end of the War, he returned to writing, reviewing for the Times Literary Supplement, and in 1953 was appointed Literary Editor of Punch magazine, in which capacity he served until 1959. From 1958 to 1990, he was a regular reviewer for the Daily Telegraph, resigning after he was criticized by Auberon Waugh. He served as a Trustee of the National Portrait Gallery, London, from 1962-76.

Through his writings, Anthony Powell would go on to international fame and in 1973 he declined an offer of knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II. He was made Companion of Honour (CH) in 1988. His journals were published between 1995 and 1997.

Anthony Powell died at his home, The Chantry, near Frome, Somerset.

A Dance to the Music of Time, the twelve-volume series of novels published between 1951 and 1975 consists of:

• A Question of Upbringing - (1951)
• A Buyer's Market - (1952),
• The Acceptance World - (1955)
• At Lady Molly's - (1957)
• Casanova's Chinese Restaurant - (1960)
• The Kindly Ones - (1962)
• The Valley of Bones - (1964)
• The Soldier's Art - (1966)
• The Military Philosophers - (1968)
• Books Do Furnish a Room - (1971)
• Temporary Kings - (1973)
• Hearing Secret Harmonies - (1975)

Partial bibliography of other novels, plays, and works:

• The Barnard Letters - (1928)
• Afternoon Men - (1931)
• Venusberg - (1932)
• From a View to a Death - (1933)
• "The Watr'y Glade", in The Old School: Essays by Divers Hands, ed. Graham Greene, 1934
• Agents and Patients - (1936)
• What's Become of Waring - (1939)
• John Aubrey and His Friends - (1948)
• Two Plays: The Garden God, The Rest I'll Whistle - (1971)
• O, How the Wheel Becomes It! - (1983)
• The Fisher King - (1986)

To Keep the Ball Rolling: Memoirs of Anthony Powell

• vol. 1, Infants of the Spring - (1976)
• vol. 2, Messengers of Day - (1978)
• vol. 3, Faces in My Time - (1980)
• vol. 4, The Strangers All are Gone - (1982)

Diaries

• Journals 1982-1986 - (1995)
• Journals 1987-1989 - (1996)
• Journals 1990-1992 - (1997)

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