Hilary Spurling’s new biography of Anthony Powell, novelist and contemporary of Evelyn Waugh (see previous posts), recently featured as the Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4. It can be accessed worldwide on BBC iPlayer, and all of the five episodes are now available. Milena Borden reports that the program and book were mentioned (along with the friendship of Powell and Waugh) this morning on the Today program, also on BBC Radio 4 (1:30:50), and the program has been reviewed in The Times, prominently mentioning the connection between Powell and Evelyn Waugh:
Radio choice, by Catherine Nixey
Anthony Powell: Dancing to the Music of Time
Radio 4, 1.45pm
He has not weathered well, Anthony Powell. His contemporaries — Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene et al — still sell by the barrel-load. But Powell has been lumbered with the reputation of a chilly aristo. Which, given that people still read Waugh (perhaps the iciest chronicler of all and a man for whom Greene’s comment about writers needing a splinter of ice in their hearts might have been invented), seems a bit tough. In her biography of him, Hilary Spurling has a bit of a shot at rehabilitation. Because for one thing, he wasn’t a toff at all. He was a bit weedy, not that wealthy and had a tough time of it at Eton (although he was, one should note, at Eton nonetheless. Not exactly a hedge school). Spurling looks at the events that inspired him. Read by Hattie Morahan.
UPDATE: More detail regarding the trailer on the Today program was inserted. Thanks again to Milena Borden.
