Anthony Powell | Lecture

Anthony Powell sans wife | Image source copy right free

Monday 5th October | 2pm – 3pm 

ANTHONY POWELL

A lecture by Keith Jewitt

Just over thirty years ago, a major weekly newspaper asked a selection of leading critics and writers a single question – “Who is the greatest living novelist writing in English?” The responses were dominated by the US trio of Bellow, Updike and Roth, but among English-born novelists one name stood out – that of Anthony Powell.

Powell was 90-ish at that time, and it was generally* agreed that his best word was several decades in the past. His great 12-novel sequence A Dance to the Music of Time was published between 1950 and 1975. The first five novels are all set in interwar Britain; the sixth flashes back to 1914; and novels seven to nine cover World War 2, when Powell was in uniform, following in the footsteps of his professional-soldier father. Together, these novels provide a long immersion in various overlapping milieux – public school, Oxford, interwar artistic bohemia, the City, wartime London and Churchill’s army. The three postwar novels include brilliant evocations of the literary world in the 1950s, where Powell was a prominent figure.

The plots of Powell’s novels are impossible to summarise and the style very difficult to evoke. PG Wodehouse, who was a serious admirer, wrote to Powell in 1973:

“As usual I am absolutely stunned by your artistry. I study the stuff under a microscope, and I still can’t see how you do it. A Powell book is unique. I have them all now….and the lovely thing is that I can go on re-reading them indefinitely.”

It’s hard to imagine a better endorsement than this, from one of England’s supreme literary craftsmen. Although Powell does not (like his friend and contemporary Orwell) loom large in the popular imagination, he still has numerous admirers who echo Wodehouse’s words and take pleasure in re-reading the Dance sequence as often as possible.

Keith Jewitt’s talk will sketch both the life and the work, including Powell’s underappreciated criticism, which for many years was his bread-and-butter. Astonishingly, a new Powell volume has only just appeared – a collection of essays and reviews which he sent to his publisher, and which the publisher managed to lose for many years.

*A notable contrarian opinion is that of AN Wilson, who has said that he likes best of all the gossipy and sharp-tongued Powell evident in his very late Journals.

A LIVE Lit & Phil Event | £3