Dilys Powell

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Dilys Powell

CBE
Dilys Powell in 1984
Dilys Powell in 1984
BornElizabeth Dilys Powell
(1901-07-20)20 July 1901
Bridgnorth, Shropshire, England
Died3 June 1995(1995-06-03) (aged 93)
London, England
OccupationFilm critic, journalist, author
LanguageEnglish
EducationSomerville College, Oxford (BA)
SubjectFilm
Years active1939–1992
Spouse
  • ​
    ​
    (m. 1926; died 1936)​
  • ​
    ​
    (m. 1943; died 1974)​

Elizabeth Dilys Powell

film critic and travel writer who contributed to The Sunday Times for more than 50 years. Powell was known for her receptiveness to cultural change in the cinema and coined many classic phrases about films and actors. She was a founding member of the Independent Television Authority (ITA), which launched commercial television in the UK. She was also the second female president of the Classical Association
. Powell wrote several books on films and her travels in Greece.

Early life and education

Dilys Powell was born in Bridgnorth, Shropshire, to Thomas Powell (a bank manager) and Mary Jane Lloyd. She attended Talbot Heath School, Bournemouth before winning an exhibition[1] to read Modern Languages at Somerville College, Oxford.[2]

Powell considered studying Classics (Literae Humaniores) – "Greats" – at Oxford University, but she was advised against it by her brother: '"Don't" he said; "the Classics are a terrible grind for a girl, and you will be prematurely wrinkled."'[3] Powell took his advice, but later regretted it, feeling that she had been robbed of "deep and solid pleasures", having "small Latin...and, goodness knows, less Greek".[3][a]

At Oxford, Powell met an archaeologist,

first-class honours degree in Modern Languages in 1923.[2]

Career

After graduation, Powell spent a period as personal assistant to Lady Ottoline Morrell before joining the literary department of The Sunday Times in 1928.[5]

In 1929, her husband Humfry Payne was appointed director of the British School at Athens. From 1931 to 1936, Powell spent part of each year in Greece, frequently attending excavations where her husband was working, including the excavation of the Heraion of Perachora, as well as attending an excavation at Abydos, Egypt.[3][6] Payne died in Athens in 1936 from a staphylococcus infection. They had no children.

Powell continued her periodic visits to Greece after 1936, until the

Second World War made travel difficult. In 1939 Powell was appointed film critic at The Sunday Times. In 1941, she found war work with a Greek connection in the Political Warfare Executive, which oversaw Britain's propaganda in occupied Europe; she remained there until 1945,[7] where she was tasked with making sure that the BBC's broadcasts to Greece accurately represented British policies.[8] In June 1943, she married Leonard Russell (1906–1974), the literary editor at The Sunday Times.[9]

Powell was one of the founding members of the Independent Television Authority (ITA) from 1954, despite initial concerns about her possible conflicts of interest (she wrote for a newspaper that was backing one of the ITV network franchises, but its bid was eventually withdrawn).[10] She resigned her post at the ITA in 1956, in protest at the government's refusal to come up with funding which it had promised to the authority in the Television Act 1954.[10] She was a long-time regular panel member of the BBC radio word game, My Word!.

Powell's journalism led a change in the writing of cinema criticism. To quote the British Film Institute: "she was open to new directions in cinema and was not constrained by the middle class shibboleths of 'good taste', unlike her rival C. A. Lejeune, film critic for The Observer from 1928 to 1960." She remained film critic at The Sunday Times until 1979 – a compilation of her reviews was published in 1989 as The Golden Screen – but from 1976 she also began writing about films on television, which she continued to do until the end of her life. Her last piece, a review of Barry Lyndon, appeared in The Times on the day of her death. She also served as film critic for Punch until its first closure in 1992.[11][12]

Powell, a

Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1974,[13][14] awarded a British Film Institute Fellowship in 1983,[15] and made an Honorary Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford University, in 1991.[16] Powell was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.[14]

In 1991, the Critics' Circle Theatre Award established the annual Dilys Powell Award for Excellence in Film in her honour. The first recipient of the award was Dirk Bogarde; other recipients have included Christopher Lee, Richard Attenborough, Judi Dench, Helena Bonham Carter, Kenneth Branagh, and Kate Winslet.[17]

Publications

Footnotes

Explanatory notes

  1. ^ Powell quoted Ben Jonson's elegy for William Shakespeare, which described him as having "small Latin and less Greek".[4]

References

  1. ^ "University Intelligence". Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer. 3 June 1924.
  2. ^ a b c "Dilys Powell, Desert Island Discs - BBC Radio 4". BBC. Retrieved 21 May 2022.
  3. ^
    JSTOR 3567848
    .
  4. ISBN 9780199684786
    .
  5. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/58012. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  6. ^ Powell, Dilys (1943). The Traveller's Journey Is Done. London: Hodder and Stoughton. pp. 53–88.
  7. ISBN 9780285640733
    .
  8. ^
    ISBN 978-0904920383
    .
  9. ^ Haag, M (5 June 1995). Obituary: Dilys Powell. The Independent archive Archived 16 April 2015 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 21 May 2022
  10. ^
    ISBN 9781349058969
    .
  11. ^ Haag, Michael (5 June 1995). "OBITUARY: Dilys Powell". The Independent. U.K.
  12. ^ "Dilys Powell, Film Critic, 93". The New York Times. 6 June 1995.
  13. ^ "Dilys Powell | British critic". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 20 September 2018.
  14. ^
    ISBN 9781135355333
    .
  15. ^ "BFI Screenonline: Powell, Dilys (1901-1995) Biography". www.screenonline.org.uk. Retrieved 21 May 2022.
  16. ^ "OBITUARY:Dilys Powell". The Independent. 5 June 1995. Retrieved 21 May 2022.
  17. ^ "Critics' Circle Film Awards". The Critics' Circle. Retrieved 21 May 2022.
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