1. Anthony Powell was born in Westminster, the son of Lieutenant-Colonel Philip Lionel William Anthony Powell, of the Welch Regiment, and Maud Mary, daughter of Edmund Lionel Wells-Dymoke, of The Grange, East Molesey, Surrey.
37 Facts About Anthony Powell
1. 2.
The Anthony Powell family descended from ancient Welsh kings and chieftains.
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Anthony Powell was then sent to New Beacon School near Sevenoaks, which was popular with military families.
4.
Early in 1919, Anthony Powell passed the Common Entrance Examination for Eton, where he started that autumn.
5.
At Eton, Anthony 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.
6.
Anthony Powell was awarded a third-class degree at the end of his academic years.
7.
Anthony Powell renewed acquaintance with Evelyn Waugh, whom he had known at Oxford, and was a frequent guest for Sunday supper at Waugh's parents' house.
8.
Anthony Powell got to know painters Nina Hamnett and Adrian Daintrey, who were neighbours in Fitzrovia, and composer Constant Lambert, who remained a good friend until Lambert's death in 1951.
9.
Anthony Powell was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1956 Birthday Honours, and in 1973, he declined an offer of knighthood.
10.
Anthony Powell was appointed Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour in the 1988 New Year Honours.
11.
Anthony Powell served as a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery from 1962 to 1976.
12.
The individuals to whom Anthony Powell dedicated his books and memoirs provide the context of his range of friends and literary connections, including John Bayley, Robert Conquest, Henry d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, Antonia Fraser, Roy Jenkins, Hugh Massingberd, Arthur Mizener, and Edith Sitwell.
13.
Anthony Powell's health declined in his later years after multiple strokes.
14.
Anthony Powell came to work in London during the autumn of 1926 and lived at various London addresses for the next 25 years.
15.
Anthony Powell worked in a form of apprenticeship at the publishers Gerald Duckworth and Company in Covent Garden, where he brought out A Tower of Skulls: a Journey through Persia and Turkish Armenia by Gerald Reitlinger.
16.
Anthony Powell left Duckworth employ in 1936 after protracted negotiations about title, salary, and working hours.
17.
Anthony Powell next took a job as a screenwriter at the Warner Bros.
18.
Anthony Powell made an abortive attempt to find employment in Hollywood as a screenwriter in 1937.
19.
Anthony Powell next found work reviewing novels for The Daily Telegraph and memoirs and autobiographies for The Spectator.
20.
Anthony Powell joined the Welch Regiment and was stationed in Northern Ireland at the time of air raids in Belfast.
21.
Anthony Powell's 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.
22.
Anthony Powell eventually secured an assignment with the Intelligence Corps and additional training.
23.
Anthony Powell was wary of right-wing groups and suspicious of inflated rhetoric.
24.
Anthony Powell married Lady Violet Pakenham, sister of Lord Longford, on 1 December 1934 at All Saints, Ennismore Gardens, Knightsbridge.
25.
Anthony Powell wrote a few more occasional pieces for the magazine until it ceased publication in March 1938.
26.
Anthony Powell completed his fifth novel, What's Become of Waring, in late 1938 or early 1939.
27.
Anthony Powell then edited a selection of Aubrey's writings that appeared the following year.
28.
Anthony Powell returned to novel writing, and began to ponder a long novel sequence.
29.
The cycle of novels, narrated by a protagonist with experiences and perspectives similar to Anthony 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.
30.
Anthony Powell was awarded the 1957 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for the fourth volume, At Lady Molly's.
31.
In parallel with his creative writing, Anthony Powell served as the primary fiction reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement.
32.
Anthony Powell served as literary editor of Punch from 1953 to 1959.
33.
Several volumes of Anthony Powell's Journals, covering 1982 to 1992, appeared between 1995 and 1997.
34.
Anthony Powell's dialogue is extraordinary; often terse, pedestrian and perfect, each character using three or four words.
35.
Anthony Powell taught me to write; he has such brilliant control of the mechanics of the novel.
36.
In 1984, Powell was awarded The Hudson Review's Bennett 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's T S Eliot Award for Creative Writing.
37.
In 1995, Anthony Powell was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Bath.