1. Elizabeth Dilys Powell was a British film critic and travel writer who contributed to The Sunday Times for more than 50 years.
21 Facts About Dilys Powell
1. 2.
Dilys Powell was a founding member of the Independent Television Authority, which launched commercial television in the UK.
3.
Dilys Powell was the second female president of the Classical Association.
4.
Dilys Powell wrote several books on films and her travels in Greece.
5.
Dilys Powell was born in Bridgnorth, Shropshire, to Thomas Powell and Mary Jane Lloyd.
6.
Dilys Powell attended Talbot Heath School, Bournemouth before winning an exhibition to read Modern Languages at Somerville College, Oxford.
7.
At Oxford, Dilys Powell met an archaeologist, Humfry Payne, whom she married in 1926.
8.
Dilys Powell graduated with a first-class honours degree in Modern Languages in 1923.
9.
From 1931 to 1936, Dilys Powell spent part of each year in Greece, frequently attending excavations where her husband was working, including the excavation of the Heraion of Perachora, as well as attending an excavation at Abydos, Egypt.
10.
Dilys Powell continued her periodic visits to Greece after 1936, until the Second World War made travel difficult.
11.
In 1939 Dilys Powell was appointed film critic at The Sunday Times.
12.
Dilys Powell was one of the founding members of the Independent Television Authority from 1954, despite initial concerns about her possible conflicts of interest.
13.
Dilys Powell resigned her post at the ITA in 1956, in protest at the government's refusal to come up with funding which it had promised to the authority in the Television Act 1954.
14.
Dilys Powell's journalism led a change in the writing of cinema criticism.
15.
Dilys Powell served as film critic for Punch until its first closure in 1992.
16.
Dilys Powell was the author of several books about the country, including Remember Greece ; An Affair of the Heart, describing her repeated visits to the village of Perachora, site of Payne's excavations of the Heraion; and The Villa Ariadne, a memoir of the archaeologists associated with the house built by Sir Arthur Evans near the palace of Knossos, including several who were active in the Cretan Resistance during World War II.
17.
Dilys Powell served as president of the Classical Association from 1966 to 1967, giving her presidential address at the University of Reading on 5 April 1967.
18.
Dilys Powell was only the second female President of the Classical Association, following Professor Dorothy Tarrant.
19.
Dilys Powell was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1974, awarded a British Film Institute Fellowship in 1983, and made an Honorary Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford University, in 1991.
20.
Dilys Powell was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
21.
Dilys Powell served as a Governor of the British Film Institute from 1948 to 1952.