Anthony Powell Conference; 9 – 11 April 2027; Edinburgh
Anthony Powell Conference; 9 – 11 April 2027; Edinburgh
The English author Anthony Dymoke Powell was born in London on 21 December 1905. He was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford where he met several other young writers and artists including Evelyn Waugh, Henry Green, John Betjeman, Graham Greene and Osbert Lancaster. Prior to World War II he worked in publishing and as a film-script writer, before becoming a full-time novelist and literary critic.
The Anthony Powell Society is a charity made up of members across the world particularly in the UK and North America who wish to promote interest in Powell and his work. Powell had a wide range of friends from George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh to V.S. Naipaul, Harold Pinter and Philip Larkin. Fans of Powell have similarly always been found across the political and literary spectrum : Kingsley Amis, Clive James, Tariq Ali, A.N.Wilson and Lady Pinter to name just a few. Hilary Spurling’s official biography is an invaluable guide to his life including the background to his literary masterpiece : the 12 volume sequence of novels entitled ‘A Dance to the Music of Time’. A TV film of ‘Dance’ was made by Channel 4 in 1997 and starred Simon Russell Beale in a BAFTA winning performance.
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As troubles get worse, small satisfactions increase, both in intensity and in expectation. I look forward with passion to the moment after I put Iris to bed. I come down, pour myself a drink, and while enjoying it read a page or two of a book, some old favourite that is lying near the kitchen table. Nothing new – never a newspaper or periodical – but nothing old and famous either, and nothing demanding. Something I have read many, many times before. It might be a Barbara Pym or a James Bond novel, or Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time, or a travel book by Ian Fleming's brother Peter ... All these lie about within easy reach.
[John Bayley; Iris and the Friends: A Year of Memories]