Anthony Powell

Anthony Dymoke Powell CH CBE (/ˈpoʊəl/ POH-əl;[1] 21 December 1905 – 28 March 2000) was an English novelist best known for his twelve-volume work A Dance to the Music of Time, published between 1951 and 1975. Powell's major work has remained in print continuously and has been the subject of TV and radio dramatisations. In 2008, The Times newspaper named Powell among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945"

Powell was born in Westminster, England, to Philip Lionel William Powell and Maud Mary Wells-Dymoke. His father was an officer in the Welsh Regiment. His mother came from a land-owning family in Lincolnshire. Because of his father's career and World War I, the family moved several times, and mother and son sometimes lived apart from Powell's father. Powell attended Gibbs's pre-prep day-school for a brief time. He was then sent to New Beacon School near Sevenoaks, which was popular with military families. Early in 1919, Powell passed the Common Entrance Examination for Eton where he started that autumn...(Read more at Wikipedia)

Links to Peel
(JP: Well, I was just about to show producer Charles Foster something that he hadn't seen before, which was a letter from Anthony Powell who, as I'm sure you don't need to be told, is the author of Dance To The Music Of Time and a great deal besides, and one of Britain's premier literary figures, and of course, Charles hadn't heard of him. It's rather frustrating when you say, "I've got a postcard from Picasso," and he said, "Didn't he play Liver over Real Madrid in the fifties?", and that kind of stuff. Doesn't impress him at all.) (10 February 1990 (BFBS))

When Peel was invited to appear on Desert Island Discs, he named the 12-volume A Dance To The Music Of Time by Anthony Powell as his book choice. This was unusual as Peel didn't seem to have much interest in "serious" literature, perhaps because listening to music took up so much of his time, but he seemed to make an exception for Powell's novel series.

How Peel became aware of A Dance To The Music Of Time is not known; the 12 volumes in the series were published between 1951 and 1975 and were adapted as a 26-part radio drama series for Radio 4 between 1978 and 1981, so Peel may have become aware of the books through hearing the radio version first

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