The English novelist Anthony Powell (pronounced "pole"), best known for his 12-volume masterpiece A Dance to the Music of Time, died last Tuesday at 94. The New York Times devoted generous space to his obituary as well as a photo of the author at his home but, as Arnold Beichman points out, failed to mention his political views -- namely his staunch anticommunism. Beichman, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, wrote on the subject in the Feb. 19, 1996, issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD ("Anthony Powell, Anti-Communist"). Aside from his storied career as a novelist, Powell was a member of the London eating club known as "The Reactionaries," whose members included Robert Conquest and Kingsley Amis. And much of A Dance to the Music of Time is spent, in Beichman's words, "skewering those of his countrymen who indulged in the most destructive passion of our time: the passion for Communist ideology and the Soviet Union." Powell, Beichman rightly noted, "does not deserve to have his passion for freedom and his enduring opposition to totalitarianism ignored."
Magazine
Anthony Powell, 1905-2000
The English novelist Anthony Powell (pronounced "pole"), best known for his 12-volume masterpiece A Dance to the Music of Time, died last Tuesday at 94. The New York Times devoted generous space to his obituary as well as a photo of the author at his home but, as Arnold Beichman points out, failed…
The Scrapbook · April 10, 2000
More from The Scrapbook
Who Are These People? Dec 14, 2018
Nice Work . . . Dec 14, 2018
The Point of It All Dec 14, 2018
Make America Manly Again Dec 14, 2018