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The Anthony Powell Society Newsletter Issue 25, Winter 2006 ISSN 1743-0976 A Peaceful Christmas and a Prosperous New Year to all members & friends of the Society Contents From the Secretary’s Desk … 2 Nina Hamnett – A Sketch … 3 A Powell Letter ... 5 UK Armed Forces Ranks … 6 AN Wilson & Betjeman … 8 Widmerpool Award 2006 … 9 Summarise Dance Competition … 10 In the News … 10 Society Notices & Events … 11 Local Group News … 14 Bertolt Brecht, The Life of Galileo … 15 From the APLIST … 16 Letters to the Editor … 20 AGM Minutes … centre spread Christmas Quizzes … centre spread Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #25 From the Secretary’s Desk The Anthony Powell Society Welcome to the 25th Anthony Powell Registered Charity No. 1096873 Society Newsletter. I think you’ll agree this is something of a landmark: the Newsletter The Anthony Powell Society is a has been going for 6 years and the Society charitable literary society devoted to the only slightly longer. life and works of the English author Anthony Dymoke Powell, 1905-2000. Newsletter issue 1 was very different from this issue. It was hastily created in Officers & Executive Committee Microsoft Word; printed on A4 paper; photocopied, stapled and mailed by the Patron: John MA Powell editor’s fair hand; and was a mere 8 pages, President: Simon Russell Beale including the flyer for the Eton conference. Hon. Vice-Presidents: What a difference now when we produce Julian Allason the page mark-up in a proper publishing Hugh Massingberd tool; have a more compact page size; *Chairman: Patric Dickinson improved design; and professional printing *Hon. Secretary: Dr Keith C Marshall and mailing. What’s more the Newsletter is *Hon. Treasurer: Dr Derek Miles now generally at least 24 pages – this one, with the inserts, will be 32 pages! And that *Committee Members: is in addition to the Society’s newly Dr Christine Berberich launched journal: Secret Harmonies. Dr Nicholas Birns (USA) Leatrice Fountain (USA) For all of this we must thank our Editor, Stephen Holden Stephen Holden. Without him the Tony Robinson Newsletter would not have flourished as it Elwin Taylor has and the journal would not exist. Newsletter & Journal Editor: Did we ever think we would get here? Stephen Holden Well I know we all hoped we would! Hon. Archivist: Noreen Marshall While we all hoped the Society would grow PR/Media Adviser: Julian Allason faster than it has we have achieved a huge amount in the last 6 years: three major All correspondence should be sent to: conferences and proceedings; a couple of Hon. Secretary, Anthony Powell Society monographs, with more to come; and the 76 Ennismore Avenue, Greenford launch of the journal. We also made a big Middlesex, UB6 0JW, UK contribution to the celebration of Powell’s Phone: +44 20 8864 4095 centenary in 2005. That is a lot for a Fax: +44 20 8864 6109 Society of a few hundred members. Email: [email protected] And let’s not forget the huge amount of enjoyment we’ve given to many, many * Members of the Executive Committee who are people around the world. the Society’s trustees. All trustees are resident in England or Wales unless stated. So this Christmas let’s all raise a glass to the Society, to our Editor and of course to our hero, Anthony Powell. © The Anthony Powell Society, 2006 and the individual authors named. All rights reserved. May you all have a peaceful Christmas and Published by The Anthony Powell Society. a prosperous New Year! Printed and distributed by Express Printing, Peterborough, UK 2 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #25 Nina Hamnett – A Sketch by James Mitchum Nina Hamnett, the “Queen of Bohemia”, Torso sculpture that provided her with the was born on St Valentine’s Day in 1890 in title of her autobiography in 1932. Tenby in South Wales. By coincidence, In Montparnasse she met her husband, the another artist with whom she was to be Norwegian artist Roald Kristian, though acquainted, Augustus John, had been born theirs was a difficult marriage that ended in the same street in 1878. Like Powell in divorce. During her time in Paris she she was an army brat, spending her continued to paint, mainly portraits, and childhood in a succession of army camps exhibited at the Royal Academy in London throughout the UK. and at the Salon d’Automne in Paris. She From 1906 to 1907 she studied at the also worked for Roger Fry’s Omega Pelham Art School and then at the London Workshops producing designs for avant- School of Art until 1910. One of her tutors garde fabrics, clothes, murals, furniture (and her favourite teacher) at the latter and the like. She also became Fry’s school was George Lambert, father of mistress: “the most fascinating, exciting, Powell’s best friend Constant Lambert. She was also taught by William Nicholson. Her talent as an artist was soon spotted by the likes of John and Sickert, both of whom sketched and painted her several times. (Incidentally, one of Hamnett’s friends from the Slade was called Edward Le Bas, possibly the source of Powell’s use of the name in Dance.) In 1914 she went to Paris to study at Marie Vassilieff’s academy in Montparnasse. On Anthony Powell Resides Here her first night in Paris she went to the café CRAWFORD DOYLE BOOKSELLERS seeks La Rotonde where the man at the next and sells early editions of Anthony table introduced himself as “Modigliani, Powell’s works together with those of other distinguished British authors such painter and Jew”. They became close as Evelyn Waugh, P. G. Wodehouse, friends and Hamnett often modelled for Virginia Woolf, Henry Green and him. In later years she would hoick up her James Lees-Milne. In addition to rare blouse displaying her bust with the boast, books, we offer a complete collection of “Modi always said I had the best tits”. She new books in our store near the Metropolitan Museum. Catalogs issued also met and befriended the likes of upon request. Cocteau, Diaghilev, Picasso and Satie, and 1082 Madison Ave., New York, NY 10028 encountered the sculptor Henri Gaudier- Open seven days per week Brzeska. They became lovers and he Telephone: 212 289 2345 [email protected] made a sculpture of her dancing naked. Member, Antiquarian Booksellers’ Later Nina would introduce herself to Association of America, Inc. people with the comment, “You know me, m’dear – I’m in the V&A with me left tit knocked off!” This was the Laughing 3 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #25 tantalising, elusive, beautiful, exasperating Soho which featured Russian billiard creature in the world”. tables (possibly the inspiration for the scenes in Dance where Jean Templer and On her return to London in 1926 she soon Nick Jenkins play billiards). Hamnett took became a regular fixture in Fitzrovia, the Powell and Constant Lambert to visit the part of London so named after the Fitzroy impoverished, opium-smoking Count de Tavern on the corner of Charlotte and Malleisque and his wife, who were staying Windmill Streets in Soho. She brought at the Cavendish Hotel in Jermyn Street with her, according to the music critic accompanied by their Pekinese and a pet Cecil Gray, “a nostalgic breath of the old monkey who was perpetually trying to spirit of Montparnasse”. defend itself from the unwelcome sexual She must have met Anthony Powell in attentions of the dog. Powell described the 1927 or 1928 when she was 37 or 38 and scene at the Cavendish in Messengers of he 22 or 23. She and Osbert Sitwell were Day: the Count collaborating on a book (published by would play the guitar, or do Duckworth’s) on London’s statues which newspaper puzzles (which were to she was illustrating. She met Powell when win him some enormous prize), while she delivered some drawings to the company drank Pernod, and a Duckworth’s where he worked. Hamnett clergyman’s voice intoned church took an immediate liking to Powell and services on the radio. invited him to her studio to draw him. (A pencil sketch of Powell by Nina Hamnett The Count features in Agents and Patients was shown in the recent Wallace as the Marquis de la Tour d’Espagne. Collection exhibition.) For Powell, In his memoirs Powell writes of Hamnett’s according to Hamnett’s biographer, “Nina heavy drinking and belligerent manner: held out the promise of adventure into an unknown Bohemian world” for someone a condition not affecting her gift, but eager to taste more of London life than the restricting continuous work to a few season of deb balls. According to Peter months at best; human relationships Quennell, to equally fragmentary associations. Nina was Anthony Powell’s first grown-up love affair. He was rather pleased with it at the time. She satisfactorily deprived him of his innocence, which is a thing people were anxious to get rid of in those days. He built her up as a romantic femme de trente ans, a Bohemian mistress. During their relationship Hamnett introduced Powell to a bizarre Firbankian world some of which he reproduces in Agents and Patients (1936). They would often visit little bistros and restaurants in Nina Hamnett 4 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #25 She would always refer to Powell as her A Powell Letter “little Etonian”. Dr Jonathan Black, in the course of his Hamnett had always been a heavy drinker research into the painter Edward but was now losing her ability to cope with Wadsworth, has unearthed the following the booze. At the same time she began to letter from Powell to Wadsworth’s develop a taste for boxers, sailors and daughter, Barbara, now owned by her other “rough trade”.