We Wish All Members & Friends of the Society a Peaceful Christmas and A

The Anthony Powell Society Newsletter

Issue 29, Winter 2007 ISSN 1743-0976

We wish all members & friends of the Society a Peaceful Christmas and a Prosperous New Year

Contents From the Secretary’s Desk … 2 The End of the Dance … 3 Widmerpool Goes to Ground … 8 Conference 2007 Report … 12 Dates for Your Diary … 16 Society News … 17 Subscriptions … 20 A Chantry Docent … 21 Umfraville & Bagshaw Exposed … 22 Book Review: Bright Young People … 23 Cuttings … 25 Letters to the Editor … 28 Merchandise & Membership … 30 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #29 From the Secretary’s Desk The Anthony Powell Society Saturday 17 November 2007 saw yet Registered Charity No. 1096873 another important, even momentous, day The Anthony Powell Society is a for the Society. It was the occasion of charitable literary society devoted to the the inaugural Anthony Powell Lecture, life and works of the English author given at the Wallace Collection in Anthony Dymoke Powell, 1905-2000. collaboration with the Society. The inaugural lecturer was the novelist, Officers & Executive Committee historian, film-maker and left-wing Patron: John MA Powell activist Tariq Ali. President: Simon Russell Beale While his talk concentrated mostly on a Hon. Vice-Presidents: discussion of Dance, it was wide- Julian Allason ranging, thought-provoking and touched Hugh Massingberd on almost the whole of Powell’s œvre – *Chairman: Dr Christine Berberich only the two post-Dance novels got no *Hon. Secretary: Dr Keith C Marshall major mention. Tariq touched too on his *Hon. Treasurer: Dr Derek WJ Miles personal likes and dislikes within Dance *Committee Members: and tried to make some sense of the Dr Nicholas Birns (USA) recent rather anti-Powell remarks by Sir Stephen Holden Vidia Naipaul. The questions posed Jeffrey Manley (USA) after the lecture were equally interesting Tony Robinson and incisive. Elwin Taylor One interesting point Tariq made in his Newsletter & Journal Editor: talk was that one cannot properly Stephen Holden understand any work of fiction (indeed Hon. Archivist: Noreen Marshall any work) without understanding the PR/Media Adviser: Julian Allason context against which it was written. All correspondence should be sent to: This reflects something I have been Hon. Secretary, Anthony Powell Society saying for a while about understanding 76 Ennismore Avenue, Greenford Dance, although I had not crystallised Middlesex, UB6 0JW, UK my thoughts in this beautifully clear and Phone: +44 (0) 20 8864 4095 precise way. Fax: +44 (0) 20 8864 6109 Email: [email protected] The Society thanks Tariq Ali for this inaugural lecture; we hope it is the first of many more; Tariq will certainly be a * Members of the Executive Committee who are the Society’s trustees. All trustees are resident hard act to follow. We also thank The in England or Wales unless stated. Wallace Collection, especially Jeremy Warren and Emmajane Avery, for their continued support, friendship and Cover photograph © John S Monagan 1984 hospitality. and reproduced by kind permission. © The Anthony Powell Society, 2007 and the It remains only for me to wish all our individual authors named. All rights reserved. members and friends a peaceful Published by The Anthony Powell Society. Printed and distributed by Express Printing, Christmas and a prosperous 2008. Peterborough, UK.

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Michael Frayn The End of the Dance by Michael Frayn

This article first appeared in The Observer on 7 September 1975. Tomorrow, the final volume of Anthony Powell’s much-acclaimed novel sequence, A Dance to the Music of Time, will be published by Heinemann. Here, MICHAEL FRAYN explores the extraordinarily complete world that Anthony Powell has created. Sometimes, when I pass the Quadriga, at used to think that people who looked Hyde Park Corner, I remember for an and behaved like Widmerpool had instant what has long been too obvious to really no right to fall in love at all. be noticed: how it felt to be grown-up. I suddenly catch the flavour of a sweltering Widmerpool, Jenkins, Barbara Goring, and summer’s night in the 1950s, when I all the events of that night are of course walked all round this part of London part of another world – the world created talking to a girl I’d just met at a party. It by Anthony Powell in A Dance to the must have been nearly dawn. We walked Music of Time, the huge novel which is down the middle of the empty roadways, finally completed tomorrow with the and I felt that after all those unsatisfactory publication of the twelfth volume, Hearing years of being young I had suddenly Secret Harmonies. inherited the entire city as my rightful estate. People think because a novel’s invented, it isn’t true, [says X Sometimes, though, it’s another memory Trapnel, one of the novel’s several that the Quadriga brings to mind – also of characters who are themselves something that happened here after a party novelists, in this final volume.] on a hot summer’s night. But this one was Exactly the reverse is the case. in, I think, 1929, several years before I Because a novel’s invented, it is true. was born. On the edge of the pavement Biography and memoirs can never be here, in Grosvenor Place, Kenneth wholly true, since they can’t include Widmerpool confided to Nicholas Jenkins every conceivable circumstance of the agonies of love he had been suffering what’s happened. The novel can do over Barbara Goring. They had just left that. The novelist himself lays it the Huntercombes’ dance in Belgrave down. His decision is binding. Square, where Barbara had poured the sugar over Widmerpool’s head. It was a I think (and I think that Powell thinks) that disclosure that came as something of a the relationship of imagined worlds to shock to Jenkins, partly because he too had perceived ones is more complex than this, been suffering over Barbara, and partly particularly where, as with Powell’s, they because in those far-off youthful days he occupy objective space and time. But in essence Trapnel is right. The world

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remembered by Nicholas Jenkins For 25 years this world has been in the (Powell’s first-person narrator) is in many process of creation – the first volume ways better established, more publicly appeared in the same year as the Festival accessible, more objectively there, than the of Britain. I didn’t stumble upon it until worlds we ourselves remember (or somewhere in the early sixties, when it had imagine we remember). reached the outbreak of the Second World War, and the threshold of my own You don’t remember my walking up conscious experience of life. It was like Grosvenor Place, but (if you’ve read discovering a complete civilisation – and Powell) you remember the night that not in some remote valley of the Andes or Widmerpool was there. In fact I remember the Himalayas, but in the midst of London, it better myself. I’ve forgotten now who in the midst of my own life. It altered my was at the party I’d come from, and I don’t perception of the world – and not only of know what’s become of the girl I was Hyde Park Corner. I began to see in my with. But I could tell you the names of own life the kind of patterns which were quite a number of the guests at the emerging in Jenkins’s life; glimpsed how Huntercombes’ dance. tremendous changes prepared themselves I know what became of Widmerpool. I unseen beneath the surface of the remember clearly the sequence of events apparently immutable course of events, which now began to occur in Grosvenor and then quite suddenly deflected one’s Place, and the position they came to life into some new course, apparently no occupy in the larger pattern of events less immutable. Another world had been which developed over the next 40 years. superimposed upon my own, refracting How Widmerpool stepped back to say and reflecting it. good night, and collided with Edgar One of the pleasures of Powell’s world is Deacon and Gypsy Jones on their way its sheer size. You can live in it – you can home from selling ‘War Never Pays!’ to get lost in it. Its texture is close and fine, late travellers at Victoria; how all four of its population dense enough to operate as them went off to have coffee at the stall by an autonomous society, with its own Hyde Park Corner – Widmerpool already political and business life, its own books falling in love with Gypsy, already and paintings. And everything in it is in becoming entangled into 40 years of perpetual movement and evolution, from increasingly bizarre political affiliations; the first appearance of Widmerpool, like how the air was full of the heavy summer some legendary ancestor of the tribe, as he night scent of the park; how at the coffee doggedly returns from one of the runs he stall an elderly man in a dinner-jacket was imposes upon himself at school, on a bleak very slowly practising the Charleston, the December afternoon “in, I suppose, the tips of his fingers in his coat pockets; how, year 1921,” until his final disappearance as they drank the coffee, Charles from the stage, now in his late sixties and Stringham, with whom Jenkins had shared stark naked, on another self-imposed run a study at school, reappeared from the in (I suppose) 1970. past, urbane and detached, and already in that state of curiously sober inebriation in You come across people you knew which he was going to spend so much of donkey’s volumes ago, often in the most his life. unexpected places, as when Charles Stringham, now dried out and burnt out,

4 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #29 but as stylishly self-contained as ever, in the hall of Bagshaw’s house (“a bit turned up in 1941 as Jenkins’s mess waiter. north of Primrose Hill”), Jenkins Widmerpool, by now in a position of speculates, with characteristic interest in power at Divisional Headquarters, saved practical minutiae, as to why Mr Bagshaw us all a lot of embarrassment on that should have had to go through the hall to occasion by having him smartly get to the lavatory. transferred to the Mobile Laundry Unit, An upper lavatory may not have and eventual death in a Japanese prison- existed, been out of order, possibly camp. occupied, in view of what took place The sharpness with which Widmerpool is later. On the other hand, some seen as he first looms up out of that lost preference or quirk may have brought December dusk is characteristic. (“Two him downstairs … Perhaps sleeping thin jets of steam drifted out of his nostrils, pills, digestive mixtures, by nature much distended.”) But so is the medicaments of some sort, were slight uncertainty about the date. In the deposited at this lower level. background definite, dateable events occur Sometimes this measured diffidence – the Gold Standard is abandoned, borders on disingenuousness. “Some sort Dollfuss suspends parliamentary of embrace may even have taken place,” democracy in Austria. But Nick recalls records Jenkins, describing his only that Maclintick, the music critic was conversation with Gypsy Jones, at the found dead “three or four days” after he birthday party of Edgar Deacon’s which and Moreland visited him, and that he had finished that unsuccessful painter off. I lasted about “eight or nine years” since the suppose it may be possible to forget evening he’d talked about suicide in whether you kissed a girl at a party; but, Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant (and when Jenkins breaks off his career as a Barnby, characteristically, had got off with writer to serve in the war, he tells us he has the waitress whom Moreland fancied). produced “three or four novels,” which is The geographical locations, too, have this as plausible a modesty as admitting only to same careful mixture of definiteness and possessing one or two feet. indefiniteness. They shade outwards from One of the ways in which Powell both Grosvenor Place and the other London suggests and distances landscapes and settings, always real and often identified faces is to see them through the brush- only by name; through Eton, unidentified strokes of particular painters; and what the but unambiguous; and Oxford, receding planes of definition and unidentified, and distinguished from knowability in his world recall is an aspect Cambridge only (I think) by the presence of painting which he mentions more than of a Rhodes Scholar, to an outer landscape once: “recession” – the receding planes of of purely fictitious great houses in colour by which perspectives can be unspecified counties. suggested. And, in the depths of the A similar uncertainty hazes many of the picture, the world we are being shown events. Recounting, at third hand, the opens into other, half-glimpsed, worlds nocturnal encounter between the elderly beyond, like the sunlit street beyond the father of Books-do-furnish-a-room open door of the room in a de Hooch. Bagshaw and the naked Lady Widmerpool,

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You can almost see the paintings and read upon its events, just as we do with the the books that Powell’s characters are world around us. Sometimes, years and producing. You know exactly the stiffness volumes later, the most radical reappraisals of poor Edgar Deacon’s academic studies become necessary of everything that of classical scenes (like the Boyhood of Jenkins and we have taken most for Cyrus, hanging on the stairs at the granted. His love affair with Jean Duport Huntercombes’), and the coarseness of at the beginning of the thirties is as Isbister’s portraits of industrialists, which absolute and unambiguous as anything in reflect only too accurately the fashionable life ever is. You have a sense of the whole preconceptions of the moment. If anyone, fabric of the world crumbling when in a literary competition, produced a Jenkins discovers, eight years and three quotation from the once-fashionable volumes later, that she had in fact been novels of E St John Clarke – Fields of simultaneously beginning an affair with Amaranth, say, or Match Me Such Marvel the disconcertingly unimpressive Jimmy – you feel you’d place it at once, sight Brent. You can’t help beginning to worry unseen. Huge panoramas of critical (though the thought doesn’t seem to occur tendentiousness open out from the title- to Jenkins) that on that memorable day page of JG Quiggin’s long-awaited when Jean opened the door of the flat Unburnt Boats; of knowingness from the (“somewhere beyond Rutland Gate”) to wrappers of the novels by which Quiggin’s Jenkins dressed only in a pair of slippers… wife, Ada Leintwardine, made her name in No, surely not! Not then! the fifties – I Stopped at a Chemist and But in fact we’re left to make all sorts of Bedsores; of hideous campness from the connections without being prompted. It Quentin Shuckerley title, Athlete’s occurs to you only afterwards, and with an Footman. uneasy shock, why it must have been that Even the characters in the immediate Priscilla Tolland suddenly insisted on foreground of the picture retain a rare abandoning her lover without any coherent inner privacy, a sense of being worlds in explanation in the middle of that wartime themselves, of having (as Jenkins says of dinner at the Café Royal. And when, at Widmerpool) their being in obscurity. the end of the war, Colonel Flores, the South American whom Jean marries after One passes through the world she has divorced Duport, tells Jenkins he knowing few, if any, of the important was at the Ritz with his family 15 years things about even the people with before, you can’t help wondering (though whom one has been from time to time again Jenkins doesn’t) if that wasn’t the in the closest intimacy. South American family Jenkins was idly This is something he keeps coming back to watching in the hotel on that very day in – “the difficulty in understanding, even 1931 when he met Jean with the Templers, remotely, why people behave as they do.” and first became her lover. Like the world we ourselves inhabit, and Powell’s, of course, is not the only unlike most of the worlds fabricated in imaginary world relating to this particular novels, the world in which Nicholas piece of space and time. Evelyn Waugh’s Jenkins lives is not fully integrated. We novels are another extensive comic have to make our own sense of its projection of the upper classes over the ambiguity, place our own construction same period. Yet they might be about

6 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #29 different planets. Waugh’s world is the girl forever diving; to the irritation besieged by middle-class barbarians of displayed later by Mona Templer, “perhaps grotesque pretensions and threatening due to an inner awareness that a love affair loathsomeness; Powell observes his was in the air, the precise location of arrivistes (like Ted Jeavons, the former car which she was unable to identify”; to “that -polisher who is taken up and married by terrible sense of exhaustion that descends, Molly, Lady Sleaford) with exactly the when, without cause or warning, an same steadiness and detached sympathy as unavoidable, meaningless quarrel develops everybody (though I suppose Widmerpool with someone you love”; and the is never forgiven the middle-class apparently simple observation that goes to laboriousness of his efforts to rise). the heart of the affair (and all affairs): “There is, after all, no pleasure like that In Waugh’s world the comedy arises from given by a woman who really wants to see the puppet-like helplessness of the you.” characters in the grip of external forces that they cannot control, and internal codes I wonder if, when he passed the Quadriga of behaviour that they cannot abandon. in later years, Widmerpool (or Lord Powell’s world is driven by human Widmerpool, as he later was) ever recalled willpower; the comedy arises from the that first meeting with Gypsy Jones (or success which the characters have in Lady Craggs, as she later was, more imposing themselves upon their material. dizzyingly but no less logically). Probably not. But he almost certainly hadn’t read Another related and powerful current, too, the book; he was never one to waste his charges Powell’s world: eroticism. time on novels. Some of the other Genuine erotic feeling is surprisingly rare characters might have read at any rate the in English fiction (perhaps in all fiction), earlier volumes. You’d think Jenkins and at the very end of The Music of Time would have done – he’s read everything the sexual interest coarsens to take in else, from E St John Clarke to Ariosto. He voyeurism and necrophilia, and finally an speculates on the relation between the entirely unconvincing excursion into fictitious and the factual in Proust, but says mystical orgiastics. But the earlier nothing about Powell. Professional volumes are alive with fascination for the jealousy, perhaps? He doesn’t tell us complexity of sexual behaviour – much about his own work, after those the tangled strands of appetite, “three or four” pre-war novels, and a later tenderness, convenience or some study of Burton. Was he, too, writing his hope of gain. twelve volumes? Is there a complete Jenkins world, bearing upon Powell’s The condition of marriage Jenkins passes world in the same way that Powell’s world over as too complex to be described at all bears upon ours? And is there, in Jenkins from the inside, but in the affair with Jean world, a writer who is producing a twelve- Duport he touches the living nerve volume meta-meta-novel in his turn ...? throughout. The evocativeness is heightened by the tact with which the Sadder worlds than ours, if there aren’t. affair is both conducted and described; © Guardian News and Media 1975 from the first unpremeditated embrace, in the back of the Templers’ car, just beyond the neon sign on the Great West Road of

7 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #29 Widmerpool Goes to Ground: Capel-Dunn in the Cabinet War Rooms by James Allason

Colonel Allason served on the Joint Planning Staff at the War Office in 1945, briefing Churchill and the Chiefs-of-Staff in the Cabinet War Rooms. Here he recalls the atmosphere of intrigue in which Colonel Denis Capel-Dunn, Anthony Powell’s inspiration for Widmerpool, conducted meetings as Secretary to the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC). Rain lashed my face as I made my way along Whitehall, heading for the secret heart of the war effort. It was February 1945 and plans for victory were at the forefront of my mind. Ahead, just visible through the downpour marched a squat Lt-Col James Allason, Royal Artillery figure in a sodden British Warm. Despite his slow progress, I did not hurry to catch this officer up as he turned right into off which water now streamed. The Royal Parliament Square. Marine Colour Sergeant at the portal saluted with as much enthusiasm as could Denis Capel-Dunn enjoyed some notoriety be considered reasonable in the hereabouts, famed for his forcefulness circumstances. By the time I had with subordinates, not excluding one exchanged a word in the cramped lobby Captain Anthony Powell, manipulation of with my naval opposite number, Captain equals, and ingratiation of superiors, “Ruggy” Macintosh (later Black Rod in particularly those of ministerial rank. His the House of Lords) Capel-Dunn had reputation had spread up St James’s Street vanished into his subterranean lair like the for a different reason. “Young Bloody” Demon King. they had christened him in Brooks’s, where he occupied the unchallenged The Cabinet War Rooms, to which I was position of club bore. Although my so frequently summoned in these tense section of the War Office was one of the days to give briefings, attend meetings and Joint Intelligence Committee’s principal amend plans, occupied the fortified clients I was in no hurry to establish more basement of the steel-framed Office of than a nodding acquaintance with the Works building in Storey’s Gate opposite spider at the centre of its very tangled web. St James’s Park, the strongest structure in Whitehall. Known simply as “George Approaching the anonymous sandbagged Street” or “Storey’s Gate”, it was protected entrance in Great George Street, I fished by a raft of concrete several feet thick my pass from the pocket of a riding mac strengthened with tram rails and had been

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so the best test was to see whether what we had prepared made any sense when typed up the next day. That composed at 4 pm was notably better than the 4 am version. The Premier’s sleeping habits were in any event an unreliable guide, as he was as likely to take an afternoon siesta as he was to keep the Chiefs-of-Staff up most of the night, often with us in attendance. More frequently, though, he worked and slept immediately above us in the six first-floor rooms of the Number 10 Annexe, the windows barred with steel shutters during bombing alerts. Unlocking my briefcase in the spartan Cabinet Room in the Cabinet War Rooms room that served as our outpost I reflected upon “Need to Know”. As a young designed to resist a direct hit, an subaltern in India in 1937 I had trained my engineering calculation fortunately never mounted troops to charge into battle, put to the test. knowing only that war was coming. Later, Work had started in June 1938, the War commanding a squadron of tanks against Room becoming operational on 27 August the Japanese my knowledge of the 1939, just a week before the declaration of enemy’s disposition had been less than war following the German invasion of was comfortable. By the time I joined Poland. Well below ground, it was Mountbatten as a senior military planner to designed to house and sleep a permanent the Supreme Allied Commander South staff of 270, with additional offices for East Asia full information had become a regular visitors such as my own team – working necessity. Today, although and Capel-Dunn’s – in some hundred and afforded oversight of all military fifty rooms. A sub-basement with low intelligence, I was surrounded by, yet ceilings housed cramped dormitories largely ignorant of a further element, the crammed with bunk beds. The complex political dimension. Not so the JIC and its was huge, with six acres of floor space and indefatigable secretary, whose tentacles a mile of corridors, but with only chemical appeared to reach into every nexus of lavatories and many smokers. While power and ambition to know no bounds. hardly comfortable the atmosphere was Appearances can mislead, however. For, purposeful; few of the visitors escorted in although this was known only to a few, by the Marine guards were left in any Capel-Dunn had in October of the doubt that this was the hub of the war previous year mounted an invasion of his effort and centre of decision-making. own. His attempt at a takeover of MI5 Within, the bunker was permanently lit, had, however, proved an intrigue too far, making it impossible to tell whether it was easily parried by the Director of the day or night when you looked at your Security Service and his eminence gris, watch. Winston’s bedroom was not close Guy Liddell, Director of Counter- enough to our office to hear him snoring, Espionage. Thereafter the influence of the

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Joint Intelligence Committee had been ever closer to the focus of power. For as constrained by a closing of secret ranks its secretary well knew, access is all. Not intended to keep Young Bloody in his box. just to people but to information and It seemed that there were confidences to intent. For the secret heart of the bunker which even the co-ordinator of secrets was was not the Cabinet Room, but the Map not privy. And one of them was under his Room. And Capel-Dunn was drawn to it very nose. as a moth to a flame. Periodically the Prime Minister would Entering I reflected that it was no disappear into his private lavatory in the coincidence that the Map Room should be bunker, which otherwise remained located next to the Prime Minister’s securely locked. And there he would bedroom. From the Map Room he had remain for a considerable time, giving rise broadcast to the nation during the dark among the secretaries to a tender concern days of 1940, and I well knew that he still about his insides. It remained a closed met heads of state and military leaders secret that behind the door, with its within its closely guarded confines. The “Occupied/Vacant” sign, the PM was walls were covered with large-scale maps talking over an encrypted transatlantic of Britain, the Atlantic and Far Eastern radio link to the President of the United theatres of war, bearing notes of force States. An early computer, located in an deployments and convoys. Outside it was annexe basement of Selfridges department posted a list of those granted access. (It is store in Oxford Street, was required to still there today, bearing Capel-Dunn’s scramble speech securely on this, the first name and my own.) “hot line”. The highly classified system An essential component of planning is was codenamed SIGSALY, the London access to the best intelligence, and my terminal being X-RAY. principal source of processed intelligence With my own papers now prepared to give was Capel-Dunn’s boss, Bill Cavendish- my briefing I proceeded to the figurative centre of the George Street complex, the Cabinet Room, protected by its own guard post. Within a square had been formed of trestle tables covered in baize, with a narrow gap to allow members of the secretariat into the centre to take notes. Around the outside facing inward sat members of the War Cabinet and Chiefs-of -Staff. Whatever the hour a meeting was likely to be in progress in the Cabinet Room. From it issued a stream of demands for information, some of which it was our task as planners to answer; others washed into the JIC. From a spare meeting room at the far, Whitehall end of the building the JIC’s quarters had by now migrated westward, Map Room of the Cabinet War Rooms

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Bentinck, immensely successful as Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee who doubled as Foreign Office Adviser to the Directors of Plans. I did not know that he was of ambassadorial rank (soon to be appointed British Ambassador in Warsaw), and always found him very helpful and never stuffy. This was unusual among diplomats of the period. Bill had succeeded Ralph Stevenson as Chairman at the JIC and had the personality to co-ordinate all Britain’s intelligence activities. It was an immense task, but one he fulfilled with rare skill and a tact not always displayed by the Secretary. Bill was admired by all the WWII Prime Minister Winston Chruchill directors of intelligence, with the possible exception of Admiral John Godfrey at the remained somewhere in the bowels Admiralty, who had – rightly – suspected beneath preparing his next intrigue. It that Cavendish-Bentinck was arranging his proved to be the post-war review of removal from his post because he was un- intelligence in which more than a few cooperative and disruptive. Godfrey was scores were settled, the report being transferred to the Indian Navy, minus the published for classified circulation under anticipated knighthood. It was a his name. Instead of the springboard to manoeuvre that Capel-Dunn must have the political career and peerage projected relished, if he had not indeed suggested it. by Anthony Powell in A Dance to the He and I remained contractually bound Music of Time it became Capel-Dunn’s together yet distant until the cessation of epitaph. Having survived the war without hostilities. As I climbed the bunker steps hearing a shot fired in anger he died in an for the last time on August 15th, breathing air crash that same year, returning from the in a lungful of fresh air, Capel-Dunn San Francisco Conference that established the United Nations. ****** Ringside Seat – the Wartime and Political Memoirs of James Allason is published by Timewell Press at £20. It is available to readers at the special price of £15 post free (UK & Europe). Cheques payable to the Blackthorn Group, PO Box 41, Wallingford OX10 6TD. The Cabinet War Rooms and Churchill Museum, Clive Steps, King Charles Street, London SW1A 2AQ are open daily from 9.30am to 6pm; http:// cwr.iwm.org.uk Ringside Seat will be reviewed in the Spring edition of the Newsletter. A SIGSALY terminal in 1943. 11 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #29 Anthony Powell Conference 2007: A Personal View by John Potter

It is a long haul for me to get to the Oxford, and London’s Wallace Collection. Anthony Powell Conference, as I live in It was my first visit to Bath. Trips to the Japan, but this 4th biennial event was West Country are rare indeed for me – and luckily the second in succession that I this was even the case when I lived in have been able to attend. Like the England – so this was a welcome previous Centenary gathering, there were adventure and the city of Bath did not also a number of delegates who had disappoint. I had been told it was nice in a travelled from far and wide to be in Bath, “chocolate box” kind of way, but it was an and a glance at the list reveals attendees old English friend who said that and I have from Ireland, Finland, Sweden, Spain, the grown used to his cynicism … The USA, and Canada, in addition to the UK. Oldfields Hotel is on the outskirts but Once again I was able to meet up – albeit within walking distance of the centre and briefly – with Koyama Taichi who was provided an excellent place to stay which I also visiting from Japan. Both of us had can recommend. Swedish delegate Malin been asked to chair sessions at the Siddiqi and her husband Faik were also Conference, which must have made it staying at the Oldfields and were seem a little as if Japan was taking over. responsible for discovering it through the internet, so they must take the credit. The University of Bath provided a fine While the Oldfields is usually described as setting for the discussion of all matters a “bed and breakfast” it’s a very superior Powellian and was a worthy successor to one, with champagne on the breakfast previous events held respectively at Eton, menu. (This was indulged only once, on the occasion of Malin and Faik’s fifth wedding anniversary, celebrated the day before the Conference.) The Conference itself was, of course, a one-day event, in contrast to the two days and prolonged celebrations of the Anthony Powell Centenary in 2005, but to me it didn’t feel diminished in any way and was thoroughly enjoyable with an excellent collection of speakers. No doubt there will be proceedings published in due course and so the details of what was said will be widely available. Here I will just mention something of the speakers who enlightened us all. The morning session got under way, following welcoming remarks by the Society’s Chairman Patric Dickinson, with DJ Taylor and John Potter at the Bath Conference 12 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #29 a talk from the novelist and biographer DJ on “Always at the Ritz: Anthony Powell, Taylor. This was entitled “Bright Young Modernist Design and the Visual Arts in People”, and is also the title of his new Britain”. He focused particularly on book which came out shortly after the Misha Black’s jackets for Powell’s books conference. He elaborated on the 1920s and the later ones by Osbert Lancaster for “exclusive gang of blue-blooded socialites Dance. Powell’s interest in Weimar and rackety bohemians”, many of whom German design was covered and also his were known to Anthony Powell during his collages and knowledge of Modernist art Eton and Oxford days. One aspect of and design which he knew considerably Taylor’s paper was the effect that these better than many realised. Following this, contacts and relationships had on Powell’s Professor Paul Delany of Simon Fraser novels of the 1930s and on the early University, Canada gave his paper “Public volumes of Dance. I have since acquired Contentions and Private Egotisms: Dance David Taylor’s new book and am looking and the Politics of the 1930s”. Delany forward to reading it when time permits pointed out that “Powell is not a Tory (or “whenever feasible” as Widmerpool novelist, but rather a novelist who might say). In the meantime, his talk was happened to be a Tory”. His contention is quite an appetiser. that although Powell’s treatment of the Left is comic, it is not malignant. The This year I read four of Taylor’s novels – personal myth of which Powell writes is three recently collected in one paperback almost universal and “the mechanisms of volume under the title Returning, plus his self-deception and hypocrisy not peculiar newest novel, the Victorian mystery Kept. to the Left, but are just as common in, say, As a fellow Norwich native, I was the Army or big business”. Ultimately, fascinated by his novel Trespass (one of Jenkins believes that Labour and Tory those collected in Returning) as it MPs have more in common than those describes the same Earlham area of the outside politics. This reminded me of city where I was brought up. I mentioned something Powell said (in the 1983 Arena this to David Taylor and it turned out that television documentary, I think) to the the newsagents in his novel was modelled effect that however different they might on the very same shop I used to visit appear, a literary figure such as almost every day as a boy back in the Dostoevsky has more in common with, 1960s. And as fellow Norwich City FC say, Barbara Cartland than either of them supporters (Taylor is a season ticket have with someone not involved in the holder) we were also able to bemoan the business of writing novels. plight our club currently finds itself in. Unfortunately, he had to leave the After a buffet lunch, the third session was Conference after the morning session for again a good balance of different but an appointment back in Norwich and this equally enthralling subjects. At the last may explain the somewhat worried look conference John Gould spoke of the on his face in the photo we had taken composer Constant Lambert in relation to together as he remembered just how late Hugh Moreland. This time, Jeffrey he was. Manley presented “Name that Tune: Preparing a Guide to the Musical The second morning session had been a References in Anthony Powell’s A Dance nice contrast. First, Dr Jonathan Black to the Music of Time”. He described the from Kingston University, London, talked

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Prof. Tony Edmonds (centre) leads a group of delegates on a Sunday morning literary walk of Bath. work going on in preparing a guide to the informative while at the same time musical references in Dance to maintaining a light touch to keep his complement the ones already in existence audience thoroughly entertained on paintings, books and places in Hilary throughout. A model presentation. Spurling’s handbook. Despite Powell In the day’s final session, the novelist and having probably less interest in music than biographer Alan Judd gave the talk the other arts, there are popular songs, “Would it be Possible Now?” This hymns and opera in Dance which perhaps focused on how a contemporary novelist shows Powell’s preference for music with might go about writing a modern version lyrics. of Dance. It concluded the proceedings in The third session concluded with Professor an interesting and sometimes light-hearted Zachary Leader of Roehampton University way with much input from the audience on giving an illuminating talk on “Kingsley the subject of who might actually write Amis and Anthony Powell: A Friendship” such a novel and also who might be in which he was able to draw on his own modern day models for the characters of research into Amis. As the Amis Dance. Patric Dickinson rounded things biographer and also the editor of his off with some closing remarks. letters, there could hardly be anyone better Although the Conference officially ended qualified to do this. While every with the close of presentations on the presentation was a success, my own view Saturday, it could really be said to have was that Zachary Leader’s paper was the continued for another day as there was a highlight of the day. It was enormously full programme for those willing and able

14 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #29 to stay on for the Sunday. The day began A pub lunch is something not to be missed with a walking tour of literary Bath for on any visit to England and after food and those of us who met up at Bath Abbey at drinks at The Raven in Queen Street it was ten o’clock that morning. The two groups off on our visit to The Chantry where a were led by Joanne and Tony Edmonds of sizeable number of delegates were lucky Ball State University. I am a relative enough to be the guests of John Powell for newcomer to walking tours, not having afternoon tea. There was some concern first participated in one until Stephen that we might not actually make it to The Holden guided us around the footsteps of Chantry as our coach lurched slowly and that long night of the parties in from A tentatively through the narrow and Buyer’s Market at the Conference two narrower lanes approaching the house. years ago in London. But I have become Like most others, I was making my first addicted to them since, so much so that I visit there and so was particularly excited had already been on a walking tour of Bath to finally see the former home of the provided by the council the day before the creator of Dance. We wandered freely conference began. This had been led by a around the house and its grounds. Not rather garrulous woman who seemed to do least of its attractions were the collages in rather more talking than walking. Tony the downstairs “boiler room”. The effects Edmonds led the group that I joined from of the lunchtime drink were taking their the Conference and struck the perfect toll and I can now confess that I availed balance between the two. The architecture myself of the toilet facilities there, while of Bath is of course one of its main admiring Powell’s artistic handiwork. attractions too and among its buildings we There was also time for visitors to have a saw the creations of both John Wood the walk by the lake where Powell’s ashes Elder, and his son John Wood the Younger were scattered and to explore the (who designed and built the Royal fascinating grotto beyond. Crescent), and of Robert Adam who was To end on a more personal note, attending responsible for designing and building this, and the Centenary conference, has Pulteney Bridge. enabled me to make and keep in touch Among other sights, the walk took in the with many new friends with similar Theatre Royal, the Royal Mineral Water interests. As the Society becomes part of Hospital, Gravel Walk and, of course, the literary landscape, its conferences Bath’s most famous claim to tourist fame, important landmarks along the way, I must Royal Crescent. The ghosts of Jane add my thanks and appreciation to Keith Austen and her characters loom large over Marshall. Not just for his work in helping the city, but also those of Richard Sheridan to organise this conference but for his who eloped from a house in the Crescent continual encouragement, energy and with Elizabeth Linley; Samuel Pepys who enthusiasm. And now I must start thinking bathed in Cross Bath in 1668; and literary about attending the next conference in characters such as Mr Pickwick, and Anne Washington. Elliott and Captain Wentworth who took Other photographs from the conference are the Gravel Walk near the end of scatted throughout this issue. Persuasion.

15 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #29

Dates for Your Diary

London Group Powell Birthday Lunch Saturday 1 December 2007 Conference 2009 Strada, 4 St Paul’s Churchyard We are pleased to announce London EC4 that the Time: 1215 for 1230 hrs 5th Biennial Anthony Powell Please contact the Hon. Sec. if you wish to Conference attend will be held over the weekend of 10-13 September New York Anthony Powell 2009 Birthday Celebration at Wednesday 19 December 2007 Georgetown University Century Club, 7 West 43rd Street Washington, DC, USA New York, USA 12 noon Further details, including exact Please contact William Warren on dates, programme, booking +1 212 259 8700 or [email protected] arrangements to follow. if you wish to attend

London Group Pub Meets 2008 Saturday 09 February Saturday 10 May Saturday 09 August Saturday 08 November The Audley, Mount Street, London, W1 Copy Deadlines 1230 to 1530 hrs The deadlines for receipt of articles Regular quarterly meeting. Good beer, and advertisements for forthcoming good food, good company, good issues of Newsletter and Secret conversation in a Victorian pub AP would Harmonies are: have known. Members & non-members welcome; further details from Hon. Sec. Newsletter #30, Spring 2008 Copy Deadline: 8 February 2008 Publication Date: 7 March 2008 Annual General Meeting 2008 Newsletter #31, Summer 2008 Saturday 25 October Copy Deadline: 9 May 2008 Venue tbc Publication Date: 6 June 2008 1400 hrs Secret Harmonies #3, 2008 Followed at 1500 hrs by a talk Copy Deadline: 8 September 2008 Details when available from the Hon. Sec. Publication Date: 24 October 2008

16 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #29

Society News

Local Groups Robert Rollason London Group 1930-2007 Area: London & SE England It is with great regret that we announce Contact: Keith Marshall the recent death of member Bob Email: [email protected] Rollason after a short illness. Bob was New England Group an active member of the Society’s Area: New England, USA London Group and an occasional Contact: Leatrice Fountain contributor to this Newsletter – indeed Email: [email protected] his last article appeared in the previous issue within days of his death. Amongst Great Lakes Group his other interests, Bob was an Area: Chicago area, USA enthusiastic and active member of the Contact: Stephen Pyskoty-Olle Betjeman Society. Email: [email protected] A Memorial service was held on Friday Swedish Group 9 November in the parish church at Area: Sweden & Finland Penn, Buckinghamshire. The Society Contact: Regina Rehbinder was represented by the Hon. Secretary. Email: [email protected] Please contact the Hon. Secretary if All who knew Bob will miss his charm you wish to make contact with a group and quiet erudition. Bob’s wife, Jean, and don’t have email. If you wish to and son John remain members of the start a local group the Hon. Secretary Society. We send our deepest can advise on the number of members condolences to all Bob’s family. in your area. Holy Trinity Church, Penn, Buckinghamshire Toronto Group Joan Williams reports that members in the Toronto area of Canada are forming a local group. Anyone who is interested and not already in touch with Joan may make contact with the group through the Hon. Secretary.

17 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #29

Centenary Conference Proceedings ERRATUM Somehow, sometime, the Gremlins got into the production process of the Centenary Conference Proceedings and they mangled the title of Marcel Anthony Powell Resides Here Proust’s magnum opus throughout the CRAWFORD DOYLE BOOKSELLERS seeks volume but especially in John Roe’s and sells early editions of Anthony paper (pages 61-69). The title of Powell’s works together with those of other distinguished British authors such Proust’s work should, of course, as Evelyn Waugh, P. G. Wodehouse, correctly be A la recherche du temps Virginia Woolf, Henry Green and perdu. James Lees-Milne. In addition to rare books, we offer a complete collection of As publisher, the buck stops with me new books in our store near the Metropolitan Museum. Catalogs issued and I take full responsibility for this upon request. inexcusable error howsoever it arose. 1082 Madison Ave., New York, NY 10028 Personally, and on behalf of the Society, Open seven days per week Telephone: 212 289 2345 I extend sincere apologies to Dr John [email protected] Roe and to the other authors affected Member, Antiquarian Booksellers’ and regret any embarrassment we have Association of America, Inc. caused. Anthony Powell would very definitely not have been amused. Keith Marshall, Hon. Secretary

John Potter at The Chantry

18 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #29

Part of Anthony Powell’s Boiler Room collage at The Chantry

Cornell University fraternity photograph from 1965, mentioned by John Gould on page 21. John Powell is 4th row, 2nd from right with George Glober two rows immediately above.

19 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #29

Subscriptions

Subscription Changes – Reminder In undertaking a periodic review of beyond 2010 will have their renewal Society finances and subscriptions the date extended by two years. trustees have concluded that it is time to • In order to more equitably distribute the make some adjustments. While an escalating cost of overseas postage it increase in subscriptions is not needed at has been decided to introduce an annual this time (indeed some members will see a £5 supplement payable by all non-UK reduction) we need to compensate for the members. This represents around 65% increasing cost of overseas postage. The of the additional postage costs incurred trustees have therefore agreed the mailing the Newsletter and journal following changes to the membership and overseas as compared with the UK subscription structure: while recognising overseas members • The Gold and Founder membership have less ready access to Society events. grades are withdrawn from 1 April We hope that this will not deter our 2008. Current Gold members will overseas members. revert to being Individual members. • These changes took effect on 1 June Existing Founder members will retain 2007 for new members and come into their status but pay the Individual rate. force on 1 January 2008 for existing • To compensate for the above, those few membership renewals. Gold and Founder members who have • It is anticipated that all subscription already pre-paid subscriptions to 2009 rates will need to rise by around 10% and 2010 will have their membership from 2009, but this will be reviewed extended by one year, and those paid up again during 2008.

Subscription Renewal Subscriptions are due for renewal on 1st are included with your reminder notice. April annually and renewal notices are Payment may also be made in UK funds sent out during March to those members by cheque, Visa, Mastercard or online whose subscription is about to expire. using PayPal. To keep down costs and subscription Members who are UK taxpayers are rates please renew promptly. asked to GiftAid their subscription. This The “5 years for the price of 4” enables the Society to reclaim basic rate membership offer is to continue income tax already paid on the indefinitely, subject to annual review by subscription; currently this is worth 28p the trustees. for every £1 paid to the Society. Subscriptions can be paid by Standing Any member whose subscription is not Order (UK members only) and recurring renewed by the end of September will be credit card transactions for which forms removed from the membership register.

20 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #29

A Chantry Docent by John Gould

For many of the 2007 Anthony Powell the walls and door of this are fully covered conference-goers in Bath, the event most as well. Everyone from John Lennon to nearly approaching sublimity was Sunday Gandhi to Disraeli to Twiggy to afternoon tea at The Chantry. John Powell anonymous 17th century courtiers watch most graciously opened the house and the from the walls. It is an extraordinary grounds to a coachful of us, serving tea experience, like visiting a museum; one and plates of goodies – not a rock bun in could spend hours lost in the images. sight! – as we passed from dining room and library, upstairs through the bedrooms, I spent my time docenting in the billiards and down to the lower floor. The upstairs room. It is dusty and fusty, a long time walls were covered with art, much Dance removed from actual billiards play. But related: Osbert Lancaster covers, a there were treasures in there. On the Michael Ayrton sketch of Constant ancient billiards table were arranged Lambert (ie. Moreland), paintings of photographs, one of Powell’s father in Powell himself, and so much more. But company with a number of other officers, for many of us, the lowest level of the and a similar one of Powell himself and house contained the most treasure. his military fellows. On one wall were long shelves filled with 20 or 30 bound The Chantry possesses four floors, which copies of The Boy’s Own Paper. Was are long and lean: the rooms stretch out in Erridge far away? a line, like what in New York city are called “railroad apartments.” Because it To me, the most interesting artefact in the was built against a falling topography, the room was a composite photograph from front of the building reveals three stories, Cornell University fraternity in the late but the rear façade has four; in the 1960s (again see photograph on page 19). basement, windows open toward the This is a gridded arrangement of small southwest. There are two significant photographs of members of the fraternity. rooms down here: the Collage Room (my Searching carefully, a visitor can find the designation) and the billiards room. face of a young John Powell, for he spent a Because I had visited The Chantry before, year as a student at Cornell and was a and knew some of the secrets of these two member of this fraternity. If the visitor rooms, I offered to function as a looks two rows higher, she will see John’s downstairs docent. best friend, with whom he spent vacations in Washington. Powell was delighted that Hilary Spurling described the Collage John had a friend to visit when he could Room at the 2005 conference, and it really not come home to The Chantry for shorter needs no docent. For a number of years holidays. The friend’s name was George Powell used to unwind from the mornings Glober – now an admiral in the US Navy – of writing by cutting and pasting and Powell commemorated the friendship photographs of faces and landscapes on by giving George’s surname to Louis the walls, ceiling, and anything else in this Glober, that charismatic film producer in room (see photograph on page 19). It Temporary Kings. contains a small loo, enclosed by a stall;

21 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #29 The Naming of Parts: Umfraville and Bagshaw Exposed! by Derek Hawes

Those members who attended the AGM in A little literary sleuthing reveals that October were fascinated to hear the Bagshawe was a member of the Rota Club, valedictory paper by retiring chairman a short-lived political debating society Patric Dickinson, who explored Anthony (1659-60) that included Aubrey and Pepys; Powell’s relationship with the College of it met at the Turks Head in New Palace Arms and the records of many Yard and was more than once broken up genealogical inquiries he had pursued in by Cromwellian soldiers, then in power. the course of a long life. Particularly Bagshawe was, said Aubrey, “a violent intriguing was the revelation that Powell’s controversialist”. own pedigree included a certain Robert de Only two other facts are known; he was Umfraville, Earl of Angus, who lived in briefly imprisoned by the Cromwellian the time of Richard II, dying in 1325 at the authorities and he is buried in Bunhill height of the Despenser rebellions. He had Fields in the City of London. As to V been present at the be-heading of the Earl Powell, he turns out to be one Vavasour of Lancaster at Pontefract Castle in 1322, Powell, an equally lively political debater and as a co-conspirator had been lucky to who was also imprisoned with Bagshawe keep his head although he lost his and others for being too keen on the return Earldom. of the King! Umfraville of course, is a name that runs Is it then just a serendipitous co-incidence like a silver thread through all the volumes that in real life both Umfraville and of Dance. Bagshawe were at the heart of the But it was equally tantalising, rebellious times in which they lived, and in subsequently, to find a possible origin for their later fictional reincarnations both another recurrent Dance character, contributed more than a little effort to Lindsay “Books do furnish a room” challenging the rhythm of the Dance? Bagshaw, with some remarkable After all, Nick Jenkins says of Bagshaw: coincidences worth exploring. “forever fascinated by revolutionary techniques …” In 1948, Powell published his researches on the 17th century antiquarian John Aubrey (1626-97) and provided readers with a long, annotated appendix of all the Contributions to the Newsletter books in Aubrey’s library, most of which are always welcome and should were given to the Ashmolean museum at be sent to: the end of his life. Two volumes were by Newsletter Editor, Stephen Holden, one Edward Bagshawe, one of which, Anthony Powell Society published in 1571 was The Life of V 76 Ennismore Avenue Powell. Greenford, Middlesex, UB6 0JW, UK Surely not Violet, which would have been Fax: +44 (0)20 8864 6109 prescient indeed! Who then was Bagshawe and why was he writing a life of Email: [email protected] V Powell? 22 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #29

DJ Taylor Bright Young People: the Rise and Fall of a Generation, 1918-1940 (Chatto & Windus, £20; 2007) Reviewed by Stephen Holden

The Bright Young People (or “BYP”) of the main characters of the time – Robert the 1920s and 1930s must be one of the Byron, Harold Acton, Brian Howard, most well-chronicled groups of people of Henry Green, Evelyn Waugh etc. He also the last century. Famous for being famous, sees Afternoon Men and From a View to a they filled the gossip columns of the day Death as particular “party” novels of the and were fictionalised by Evelyn Waugh time. Taylor also identifies Powell’s role and Nancy Mitford, photographed by Cecil as an influential man behind the scenes, Beaton, and painted by Rex Whistler and because through his job at Duckworths he Edward Burra. DJ Taylor has produced an managed to get published early works by interesting history of this “lost Waugh, Byron and Inez Holden, among generation”, using not only the usual others. sources (Waugh’s and Beaton’s diaries, Taylor has also had access to the letters novels of the period such as Vile Bodies Powell wrote to Henry Yorke (Henry and Afternoon Men) but also secondary Green) in 1927-1928, when Powell was sources, such as magazines and working in London and Yorke at the newspapers of the day. Elizabeth family manufacturing firm, Pontifex, in Ponsonby – whose story forms a central Birmingham. Powell reports on the strand of this book – was one of the prime progress of his social life and the activities movers in the BYP, and Taylor has also of mutual friends, while Yorke is had access to her long-suffering parents’ increasingly aware of his detachment from diaries. that life. Several of Powell’s letters Taylor says of the BYP that as a group mention the Biddulph sisters, Mary and they defy instant analysis. Some “became Adelaide (known as “Dig”), to whom both successful writers, journalists or artists, Powell and Yorke were romantically while others plumbed the depths of drink, attracted. In 1928 Powell wrote to Yorke: drugs and disappointment”. Nor is it The more one sees of the Biddulphs, possible to write off the BYP as a bunch of the more one learns. I’m at a loss to “gilded triflers” since the society they know why they tolerate one at all. moved in produced so many leading Mary, describing a dinner party at the writers and artists. But DJ Taylor covers Russells at which we had both been the failures as well as the successes. present, said with extraordinary There’s a particularly good chapter venom: “and they talked about comparing two of Powell’s Eton Oxford the whole time and all the contemporaries, Brian Howard (failure) books everyone had written there”. and Robert Byron (success). DJ Taylor surmises that “the faint air of Anthony Powell features heavily in coldness that infected their relationship” Taylor’s book, not just as a participant in when Henry Yorke married Dig in 1929 the jollities but also as a chronicler of had two sources. On the one hand Powell them. Taylor quotes Powell on many of felt that his rejection as a suitor was 23 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #29 because of his inferior social status (son of an army officer competing with son of a wealthy industrialist), and on the other hand that Yorke had somehow behaved disingenuously in the whole matter. In his conclusion, Taylor says of the BYP that like many a youth movement they began unobtrusively, found themselves seized upon by a grateful media and were rapidly converted into a stylised and decadent version of their original form. Like many other youth movements the BYP “carried with them the cause of their future destruction”, ending up in pursuit of spectacle for its own sake. Going back to the BYP’s “successes”, Taylor notes that for some people, Why Not Advertise Here? mostly ambitious young men from middle-class backgrounds, this milieu *** offered a springboard for Display Advert Rates international success. Full Page: £30 ½ page or full column: £20 He cites in particular Waugh and Beaton as finding the milieu they inhabited as 1/3 page (horizontal): £15 offering them ¼ page (½ column): £10 1/6 page (1/3 column): £8 both a subject and a range of B&W artwork only connections from which they could forge durable careers. *** Flyer Inserts Taylor’s book finishes at the start of World £30 per A4 sheet War 2, with the publication of Yorke’s £15 per A5 sheet Party Going (a novel that is seen as a kind plus printing costs of coda to the whole BYP whirl), and the death from drink of Elizabeth Ponsonby *** (in many ways the central character of Small Ads Taylor’s book) in 1941. Free to Society members Bright Young People is an excellent Others 10p/word, minimum £3 account of a fascinating period of English *** social life, and DJ Taylor, as usual, makes Births, Deaths & Marriages many perceptive comments about the era Free to Society members and its characters. Others 25p/word, minimum £5

24 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #29

… Cuttings … Cuttings … Cuttings … Cuttings …

From Alice Thompson in the Daily Paul Willetts Talk on Telegraph (20 September 2007): Julian Maclaren-Ross Bank managers might be tyrants, like On Monday 10 December 2007 (in the one in the Private Eye cartoon Fitzrovia at Bourne & Hollingsworth, saying: ‘Yes, I am prepared to grant 28 Rathbone Place, London W1) Paul you an overdraft, but first I’d like a Willetts will talk on “Fear & Loathing little more grovelling please’. But in Fitzrovia: The Strange Lives of often they acted as father figures, Julian Maclaren-Ross”. Maclaren- ‘men dedicated to duty’, as Anthony Ross was, by Powell’s own Powell described his fictional bank admission, the character model for X manager. At least they were Trapnel in Dance. Paul Willetts is accountable, unlike the blank screen author of a biography of Maclaren- staring at Northern Rock’s online Ross, Fear and Loathing in Fitzrovia customers or the call-centre man in (published by Dewi Lewis Bangalore. Publishing) and a forthcoming edition of Maclaren-Ross’ selected letters. The talk is at 7 pm, followed by live jazz from Alan Weekes & cocktails Quiggin’s Mint Cake from Hendrick’s Gin. Prue Raper noticed this advertisement in a recent Sunday Times:

Quiggin’s, Gypsy Jones Character Model? The Home of Kendal Mint Cake Dr Jonathan Black (who spoke at the We have been making Kendal Mint Bath conference) has identified a cake since 1880. This is longer than possible role model for Gypsy Jones: any other company still in existence and which is why we believe that we By the way, Misha Black’s are the home of Kendal Mint Cake. Gypsy Jonesish Bolshie artist Kendal Mint cake has long been lady friend Pearl Binder (1904- known as a supplier of energy and 1990) became ‘Lady Elwyn- therefore very popular with outdoor Jones’ when her hubbie leftie field pursuits like climbing and lawyer and Labour MP for West walking. Today Quiggin’s range of Ham Fred was made Attorney- products extends to more than the General in 1964 by Wilson. An original mint cake. We make Rum & AP link, perhaps? Fred was also Brandy Butters, Truffles & Marzipan, a noted bibliophile … Fudges, Chocolate Creams and even a Do any members have any further refreshing line of Herbal Punches. information about this couple?

25 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #29

… Cuttings … Cuttings … Cuttings … Cuttings …

From Simon Barnes in the Times From Max Hastings in the (21 September 2007): Guardian (17 September 2007): Because the truth is that Mourinho’s The Northern Rock crisis, and the [former manager of UK football club City’s excesses, expose the dangers in Chelsea] power was only ever an our remaining ignorant of market illusion. He drew attention to complexities. himself, he had the nation’s football press delighting in every pose, every Financial management is the new absurdity, every contradiction, but he witchcraft, an art that makes many of was never truly in charge of Chelsea. its practitioners absurdly rich, Such power as he had was loaned, not commands the grudging respect of achieved or given. millions, but relies upon skills and secrets that remain opaque to all Mourinho reminds me of the critic in outside the Magic Circle. Anthony Powell, whose goal ‘was to establish finally that the Critic, not the Few of those who preside over the Author, was paramount’. The cult of cauldrons possess social or cultural the manager is designed to promote graces. In the company of City folk, I the idea that the manager, not the often recall some lines from Anthony player, is paramount and Mourinho’s Powell’s novel A Buyer’s Market, is the ultimate expression of this cult. describing the tycoon Sir Magnus And that’s why Mourinho had to go – Donners at a lunch party: because the cult is based on a false On the lips of a lesser man his premise. In the end, the players are words would have suggested the stars. processes of thought of a banality so painful – of such profound and arid depths, in Prompted by the new film Interview which neither humour, nor Ginny Dougary presents a primer imagination, nor, indeed, any for real interviewers in the Times form of human understanding (September 2007); it includes: could be thought to play the However much work you put in, be smallest part – that I almost prepared for the caustic or batty put- supposed him to be speaking down. A very elderly Anthony Powell ironically, or teasing his guests berated me for not having read the by acting the part of a bore in a whole of A Dance to the Music of drawing-room comedy. Time – and indeed every book he had written. He then complained about my ‘quite horrible, horrible voice’ and the interview was brought to a close.

26 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #29

… Cuttings … Cuttings … Cuttings … Cuttings …

From AN Wilson on The Great Gatsby and Powell’s debt to From Michael White in the Fitzgerald in the Daily Telegraph Guardian (14 September 2007): (29 October 2007): It transpires that as a new MP Mr Reading it again, I became aware of Brown was startled to receive a letter how very many writers borrowed from the then-prime minister from Scott Fitzgerald; more than that, [Margaret Thatcher], expressing were in his thrall. Three of my interest in an economic speech he had favourites came to mind. When the just made: they met and, Top Sources narrator is introduced to Jordan Baker, said yesterday, ‘disagreed on nearly the silent, beautiful golf champ, he everything’. When Mr Blair left in roars out “’Hello’. My voice seemed June Lady T sent a routine ‘good luck’ unnaturally loud across the garden. ‘I note. The novelist Anthony Powell thought you might be here,’ she once said that people who write responded absently, as I came up.” It fiction have more in common with is “pure Anthony Powell”. Powell, other people who write fiction than who acknowledged his debt to, as with anyone else: the same is true of well as personal fondness for, Scott the prime ministers’ club. Fitzgerald, learns from him the trick of making dialogue authentic by not allowing the characters, exactly, to respond to one another. Questions never get directly answered. There are many other aspects, especially in From The Independent (15 his handling of big crowds at parties, September 2007): where one is aware of Powell drinking at Fitzgerald’s teats.” News that an elderly couple has been living in a Travelodge for 22 years has been greeted with disbelief. In fact, says Andy McSmith, they are part of a great tradition. Who would want to live in a hotel? Not just stay in one, for a pampered holiday, but actually live in it, right through all four seasons, year after year, like the deaf old major in Fawlty Towers, or the eccentric Uncle Giles in Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time?

27 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #29

Letters to the Editor

Thoughts for Discussion – Responses From John Powell Sorceresses, more than most, Some comments on ‘Thoughts for are safer allowed their discussion’ on page 13 of the 28th AP professional amour propre. Newsletter: [Anthony Powell; Temporary Kings] 1. The name of our butcher in Albany Street just off Chester Gate in London was Northern underground line creeping from Cutts. I know AP regretted not having Golders Green through Hendon to been able to buy Mr Cutts a Guinness in Edgware. Certainly there was a boom the pub before we left London for development of middle-class housing Somerset in 1952. The surname may, estates bordering that line, which enabled therefore, also be a small tribute to Mr & my parents to acquire their first (and only) Mrs Cutts as well the surname of Roddy house in Hendon in 1928, and I arrived a the MP in Dance. year later. 3. AP did say categorically that both the In my young days (pre-1940) Hendon name Gypsy Jones and her character were Borough Council was seen as a model invented. local authority in terms of encouragement 4. Both AP & VP were familiar with of parks and other open spaces and public Douglas Byng (among others). My libraries. Now things are very different. mother was a bit of an expert from her The parks are notoriously neglected and days of going to cabaret. We do have a the central public library is seen as more of copy of Byng’s memoir As You Were an internet café with library facilities published in 1970, long after Max Pilgrim attached, for the benefit of students at first appeared in Dance. Middlesex University next door. This is all expendable. I thought that you In the time-frame of A Buyer’s Market it is might, at least, like to know about Douglas understandable that Powell may well have Byng. for that time taken a somewhat jaundiced view of Hendon. –——– On a quite different subject, I have From Mr AC “Sandy” Morrison wondered which three characters in the In Newsletter number 28 comment is Dance might be tempted to join me at a invited on what Powell may have had table for four at, say, the Café Royal, against Hendon in the context of regardless of age and contemporaneity. disparaging remarks about Gypsy Jones’ My own choice might be General Conyers, background. Gypsy Jones and Erridge. Sparks might At the time of A Buyer’s Market (1928- fly – disappointing if not! I could also 1929) the development of Hendon would have perhaps eavesdropped on the (or could) have been seen as part of the exchanges between Priscilla Lovell and increasing despoilment of the green fields Odo Stevens. of Middlesex in consequence of the Have other members other choices?

28 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #29 Singing Locomotives From Colin Donald Greetings Comrades! If you have ever thought that Powell went too far with his spoof title for the “frank propaganda” manuscript submitted to Quiggin & Craggs The Pistons of Our Locomotives Sing the Songs of Our Workers (BDFR 142, 239), I have news for you. A review by Jonathan Keates of a new biography of the Polish-born film director Roman Polanski (Polanski by Christopher Sandworth, Century, £18.99) in this week’s Spectator contains the following paragraph: The postwar communist culture of relentless agitprop and uplift, in which Warsaw theatres staged plays with titles like The Workers’ Hearts Sing Out Like the Locomotive Whistle, made further demands on his Kaarina Huhtala with Jake, The Chantry’s current survival skills. While still a student resident cat. at film school in Lodz, he began plotting to ‘get the f*** out of Poland, grow a beard and become a Lonely Spectators? writer’. From Andrew Clarke So this is where Powell got that title! I In a recent Spectator competition, readers wonder who his Polish-speaking source were asked to submit a lonely-hearts was? You couldn’t make it up – and he column advertisement ostensibly from a didn’t! well-known literary character. The following entry by Adrian Fry, published in the issue for 29 September 2007, may attending to such affairs of state as be of interest: are put my humble way, and broadly supporting the efforts of Mr Stalin; Substantial, successful self-made so, I trust, shall you. Encumbered gentleman (NSOH) with interests in only by my splendid if elderly spheres political, commercial and mother, roots in the fertiliser business cultural, and key to a commensurate and certain hush-hush commitments wide social network WLTM socially about which it would be impolite to advantageous, volatile woman with a discourse upon at this juncture, I penchant for administering might even go so far as to suggest humiliation. I enjoy fine dining that here is an opportunity for a lucky (though my digestion is not good and lady to become a luckier lady. I shall I cannot abide having sugar at table), say no more.

29 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #29

Society Merchandise

Centenary Conference Proceedings BBC Radio Dramatisation of Dance Collected papers from the 2005 centenary Originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4 conference at The Wallace Collection, between 1979-82. 26 one-hour episodes. London. For copyright reasons, available to Society UK Price: £10 Overseas Price: £14 members only. Single CD of 26 MP3 files. Price: £11 Secret Harmonies: Journal of the (£3 + minimum £8 Donation) Anthony Powell Society, Issue 1, 2006 26 Audio CDs. Price: £70 (£26 + 86pp of Powell-related articles. minimum £44 Donation) UK Price: £4 Overseas Price: £5 (CD prices apply to both UK & overseas) Centenary Newsletter Audio Tapes of Dance Bumper 120-page celebratory Centenary Copies of the following audio tapes of Newsletter (issue 21; December 2005). Simon Callow reading (abridged) volumes UK Price: £6 Overseas Price: £7 of Dance: Oxford Conference Proceedings A Question of Upbringing Collected papers from the 2003 conference The Kindly Ones at Balliol College, Oxford. The Valley of Bones UK Price: £8 Overseas Price: £9 The Soldier’s Art UK price: £3 each Eton Conference Proceedings Overseas Price: £4 each Papers from the 2001 conference; limited edition of 250 numbered copies signed by Fitzrovia: London’s Bohemia the Society’s Patron. Written by Michael Bakewell and UK Price: £9 Overseas Price: £10 published in the National Portrait Gallery “Character Sketches” series this small Writing about Anthony Powell volume contains snapshot biographies of The talks given at the 2004 AGM by Fitzrovian characters including Powell and George Lilley, Michael Barber and Nick many of his friends. Birns; introduced by Christine Berberich. UK price: £4.50 Overseas Price: £7 UK Price: £4 Overseas Price: £5 Society Postcard The Master and The Congressman B&W postcard of Powell with his cat A 40-page monograph by John Monagan Trelawney. Pack of 5. Picture, page 24. describing his meetings with Powell. UK Price: £2 Overseas Price: £3 UK Price: £4 Overseas Price: £5 Wallace Collection Poussin Postcard Wallace Collection Poussin Poster The Wallace’s luxurious postcard of The Wallace Collection’s 48.5 x 67.5 cm Poussin’s A Dance to the Music of Time. (half life-size) poster of Poussin’s A Dance Pack of 5. Picture, page 27. to the Music of Time. Mailed in a poster UK Price: £2 Overseas Price: £3 tube. Picture, page 27. UK Price: £6 Overseas Price: £7.50 Newsletter Back Numbers Back numbers of Newsletter issues 6, 8 to Society Bookmarks; pack of 10. 20 and 22 to 28 are still available. UK Price: £1 Overseas Price: £1.50 UK price: £1 each Overseas Price: £2 each 30 Anthony Powell Society Newsletter #29

Society Merchandise

Pricing Notes. The prices shown are the Ordering. Please send your order to: Society members’ prices and are inclusive Hon. Secretary, Anthony Powell Society of postage and packing. 76 Ennismore Avenue, Greenford Please note the different UK and Middlesex, UB6 0JW, UK overseas prices which reflect the Phone: +44 (0) 20 8864 4095 additional cost of overseas postage. Fax: +44 (0) 20 8864 6109 Email: [email protected] Non-members will be charged the overseas price shown plus postage & Payment may be by cheque (UK funds packing at cost. drawn on a UK bank), Visa, Mastercard or online using PayPal to [email protected].

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Country: ¨ I am a UK taxpayer and I want all donations I’ve made since 6 April 2000 and all Email: donations in the future to be Gift Aid until I notify you otherwise. Number of years membership being paid: By completing this form I agree to the Society 1 / 2 / 3 / 5 years for price of 4 holding my information on computer. Overseas members please remember to add £5 pa postage supplement Signed: Gift Membership If this is a gift membership please attach the name & address of the recipient plus any special message on a separate sheet of paper. Date: Where shall we send the membership? ¨ Direct to the recipient ¨ To you to give to the recipient personally Please send the completed form and payment to: Hon. Secretary, Anthony Powell Society Phone: +44 (0) 20 8864 4095 76 Ennismore Avenue, Greenford, Middlesex, UB6 0JW, UK Fax: +44 (0) 20 8864 6109