2011 Christmas Competition

2011 Prize Competition

This year contestants are asked to write parody answers to "magazine-style" interview questions as they may have been given by Anthony Powell. Entries must answer at least eight of the following questions; additional questions of your choice may be included.

1. Favourite childhood book?
2. Bad book habit?
3. Do you have an e-reader?
4. Least favourite book you read this year (so far)?
5. How often do you read out of your comfort zone?
6. Can you read on the bus?
7. What is your favourite language to read in?
8. Genre you rarely read (but wish you did)?
9. Have you ever read a self-help book?
10. Favourite reading snack?
11. If you could read in a foreign language, which language would you choose?
12. Most intimidating book you’ve ever read?
13. Favourite fictional character?
14. Favourite fictional villain?
15. What distracts you easily when you’re reading?
16. Are there any books you’ve been avoiding?
17. Name a book that made you angry.
18. Favourite guilt-free, pleasure reading?

Maximum three entries per person.
The prize is a year’s membership of the Society or Society merchandise to the same value (please state your preference).

Entries by post, fax or email, with your name & address should be sent to:
2011 Prize Competition, Anthony Powell Society, 76 Ennismore Avenue, Greenford, Middlesex, UB6 0JW, UK
Fax: +44 (0)20 8020 1483
Email: comp@anthonypowell.org
by the closing date of 31 January 2012.

The winning entry will be the one which most amuses the AP Society Newsletter Editor.
The winner will be announced in the Spring 2012 Newsletter.

Competition Conditions
The judges’ decision is final and binding. Entry is open to Anthony Powell Society members and non-members. No purchase necessary. Entries must be original and the work of the person submitting them. Maximum three entries per person. No cash alternative. No correspondence will be entered into. The Anthony Powell Society reserves the right to publish the entries but otherwise copyright remains with the author.

Powell–Vanderbilt Letters

The Acceptance of Absurdity
Anthony Powell – Robert Vanderbilt Letters 1952-1963

Edited by John Saumarez Smith & Jonathan Kooperstein
Paperback; 2011

AP Society Members’ Price: UK £17, Overseas £19.50
Non-Members Price: £19.50 + p&p at cost

We are pleased to have acquired a supply of the following which has just been published …In February 1952 the proprietor of the leading Anglophile bookshop in New York, Robert Vanderbilt Jr, wrote to Anthony Powell suggesting that he should reprint one, possibly two, of Powell's pre-war novels. This led to an animated exchange of letters about the production and sale of Two Novels: Venusberg and Agents & Patients and a longstanding friendship. When Powell became Literary Editor of Punch the correspondence took on a new life as both men helped each other find books to review or sell. The result is a literary kaleidoscope with London and New York equally represented. It also reminds a later generation of the lasting rewards of letter writing.

Copies may be ordered by emailing secretary@anthonypowell.org.

Announcement: Borage & Hellebore

The Anthony Powell Society is pleased to announce ...



Borage and Hellebore
The Many Sides of Anthony Powell’s Art

with
Dr Nicholas Birns*
and guests

Conference Room, St James’s Church
Piccadilly, London, W1

Saturday 17 March 2012
1345 hrs

Tickets £10
(includes tea/coffee and cake)

Is A Dance to the Music of Time the only reason to read Anthony Powell?
Or do his other novels, memoirs, journals, reviews, criticism, biography and plays offer a body of work fully the equal of Dance?
Join Nick Birns and guests for an invigorating afternoon debate on whether Anthony Powell was the author of one great work or the great author of many works in multiple genres.

A rare opportunity to hear and debate with one of the world’s experts on Anthony Powell’s works

Members and non-members welcome.

Please book by email to secretary@anthonypowell.org.

* Nick Birns teaches English literature and humanities at Eugene Lang College, the New School, New York and is author of Understanding Anthony Powell (U. South Carolina Press; 2004) and Theory After Theory: An Intellectual History of Literary Theory from 1950 to the Early 21st Century (Broadview; 2010). He is author of several other books as well as papers and reviews in a wide range of publications.

For those of you within striking distance of London there are AP Soc London Group two events coming up, one each side of Christmas:

Anthony Powell Birthday Lunch

Saturday 3 December 2011, 1230 for 1300 hrs
Queen’s Head & Artichoke, 30-32 Albany Street, London NW1
Celebrate Powell’s birthday and wedding anniversary with a gastro-pub lunch.
2 courses for £19, 3 courses for £23 (plus service and drinks).

Hon. Secretary’s New Year Breakfast

Saturday 14 January 2012, 0900 hrs
5th Floor Café, Waterstone’s, Piccadilly, London W1
Celebrate the New Year with a difference: an informal Saturday breakfast in a bookshop! There'll be the usual good company, good conversation and good food plus Waterstone’s five floors of books. Waterstones, Piccadilly is in the former Simpson’s tailors building – which Powell surely knew – and is only a few hundred yards from the Ritz.

Both events are pay on the day. Non-members are welcome. Please book by email to secretary@anthonypowell.org.

Catholic Herald

There's a nice little squib for Dance by Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith in this week's online version of the Catholic Herald.