Anthony Powell FAQs

Apart from the obvious cynical or impolite terms of endearment you mean!?   There seems to be no universally agreed term. In view of the fact that Powell is pronounced Pole or Po-ell, Powellians seems to fit well and is the term used most often within the Society. Other terms have been suggested including: Powellologists, Powellographers and Powellites. Powelldolators was suggested by one correspondent who thinks the term may have been coined by Benjamin DeMott; however this seems an extremely clumsy coinage.

Powell commented in Journals 1987-1989, on Friday 13 November 1987, the day he was offered the Companion of Honour, that he felt a knighthood to be “undesirable for a writer” but does not elaborate further. Elsewhere he has commented about the confusion which would arise were he knighted and the correct usage required for Lady Violet who was titled in her own right.

No, we don’t know and it would be interesting to find out. In his memoirs Faces in My Time Powell gives few details but does imply that nothing he worked on was ever made let alone released. The one film he does describe working on was a treatment of the life and work of the philanthropist Dr Barnardo – but even this never saw the light of day. Clearly there is a major research project here for someone.

Yes. This is a series of five novels by JIM Stewart (aka. detective writer Michael Innes).

• The Gaudy (1975)
• Young Pattullo (1976)
• A Memorial Service (1976)
• The Madonna of the Astrolabe (1977)
• Full Term (1979)

Although they are not a spoof of Dance they do contain a character intriguingly called Nicholas Junkin. Unfortunately it appears that these novels are no longer in print.

Thanks to to David Christie for researching the TLS review dates.

First of all, let’s agree that the 12 volume sequence A Dance to the Music of Time is always known in short as Dance, this being the short form always used by Powell himself.  (Note: it is NOT The Dance.)

The titles of the individual volumes themselves are then abbreviated with the initial letters of their titles, hence:

These abbreviations are those used by Hilary Spurling in her Handbook to “Dance to the Music of Time”. Given Spurling’s friendship with AP, it seems reasonable to assume that these abbreviations are, at the very least, not objected to by Powell.

See the Buying Books & Videos page.

Yes, there is a CD of soundtrack music from Channel 4’s Dance adaptation. The CD contents are:

The CD booklet has brief notes on each TV episode and a short biography of AP and Carl Davis. Although the CD now appears to be deleted, copies do surface from time to time on the second-hand market.

We know some, but undoubtedly not all, of the locations.

• The public school scenes were actually filmed at Eton. Apparently they allowed this only because AP is an Old Etonian.
• The post-war thanksgiving service at St Paul’s Cathedral was actually filmed in St Paul’s.
• The Ritz was one of the few places which declined to allow scenes to be filmed there. Apparently the Ritz scenes were filmed at Luton Hoo, as it seems were a number of the scenes in various embassies, etc. Luton Hoo (which unusually for England is at Luton!) was built in 1768 by Robert Adam and the grounds landscaped by Capability Brown.
• Knebworth House in Hertfordshire was used as the location for Thrubworth. Knebworth was started in 1492 by Sir Robert Lytton, but extensively rebuilt in the middle of the 19th century.
• Wyfold Abbey, near Henley, was used as the location for the House of Commons dining room and also for the hippie commune scenes. Julie Gerrard has suggested in a private email that Wyfold Abbey is actually Wyfold Court, built 1872-6 by G Somers Clarke for the cotton master Edwards Hermon. This is described by Mark Girouard in his The Victorian Country House (1979) as “an ostentatious and accomplished essay in French Flamboyant Gothic”
• Another e-mail correspondent tells me that the Stourwater scenes were filmed at Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire. Berkeley was built in the 12th century, rebuilt in 14th and parts again rebuilt in 17th century. Its main claim to fame is as the place where Edward II was murdered in gory detail!

All the details we have can be found on the BBC Radio Adaptation page. Unfortunately we do not have details of the music.

Yes there are many. Try doing a search on Google and you will find quite a few hits, including the Wikipedia page.

On page 172 of the first volume of his memoirs, his memoirs To Keep the Ball Rolling: Infants of the Spring Powell is quite specific about the setting for Venusberg:

Venusberg, again, recalls some of these Finnish interludes . . . The town described . . . is a mixture of Helsinki (where we lived . . .) and Reval (as Tallin was still apt to be called) . . . where I spent a weekend. The architectural admixture of this ancient Hansa city, with the modernity of Helsinki, apparently produced an approximation to Riga . . . which I did not visit.

This does indeed seem to be true. According to AP in his Journals 1982-1986 (pp 78-79, 273) the character Lamont in The Fisher King is in part based on Harold Evans, former editor of The Times and The Sunday Times.

Caledonia is indeed very rare as it was privately published. Over the years I have seen only a handful of copies for sale on the UK second-hand book market and they generally fetch upwards of £2000. However Caledonia was reprinted in 2011 by the Greville Press.  The text is also reprinted in the Oxford Book of Light Verse, edited by Kingsley Amis (OUP; 1978).

The short story A Reference for Mellors was originally published in The New Savoy, No. 1 (1946). It has subsequently been reprinted in Winters Tale 12 (1966); republished by Moorhouse & Sorensen in 1994; and included in Some Poets, Artists and “A Reference for Mellors” (Timewell Press, 2005).

Iron Aspidistra is a poem written by the late Roy Fuller as a tribute to AP on his 80th birthday. It was published in a limited edition of 400 by the Sycamore Press, Oxford, in 1985. It is a spoof work, supposedly written by the author Mark Members (yes, the character in Dance) and as such contains a spoof publisher’s permission acknowledgement and a spoof biographical note on Members.

As far as we are aware Powell did not keep a diary beyond 1992. Even if he did, there are no known plans for its publication.

We have never seen any mention of this. If anyone has any information to the contrary then please email us, as I’d love to know about it.