Hertford House (left) home of the Wallace Collection and Jeremy Warren, the Wallace's Assistant Director. The Society owe Jeremy and all the trustees and staff of the Wallace a huge debt of gratitude gratitude for hosting the Centenary Conference, for their Powell Exhibition Dancing to the Music of Time and for all their other associated events. |
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by Tony Robinson As delegates arrived at the forecourt of Hertford House in Manchester Square, London on that bright morning of December 2nd, they might have been forgiven for feeling that their destination was not the Society's Conference, hosted by the Wallace Collection, but Proust's late 19th-century Paris. The house was built in 1776 for the Duke of Manchester but the steep roof and the porte cochere with which the architect Thomas Ambler refaced it gives it the appearance of an hotel de ville.So writes Mark Fisher in his guide to Britain's Best Museums and Galleries. While the Conference itself started that morning in the building's more prosaic Lecture Theatre, down a steepish stone double staircase which also gave onto the Centenary Exhibition rooms, and for many ended two days later with the two guided walks in the streets of Mayfair or Bloomsbury, my own Conference timeline had seemed to have stretched over a longer period. As just one member of the Conference Organising Committee, I had been privileged to have been invited to the opening of the exhibition Dancing to the Music of Time a month earlier, at the beginning of November. The first person I met was Queen Marie-Antoinette. This bizarre event occurred on the aforementioned stone staircase at the Wallace. I did not follow her, as bidden, to her apartment on the first floor, where she was illustrating the Wallace's other exhibition - Fit for a Queen - but enjoyed instead the lavish, indeed glittering, champagne reception, where some Society members found ourselves in the company of a good number of Afternoon Men (and Women). And just as "my Conference" had so started in early November, it continued through December and only really ended with the splendid AP centenary birthday party on December 21st hosted by our Chairman, Patric Dickinson, at the College of Arms. The champagne was equally good and copious, the conversation, so aided, witty. We all hoped we would be able to gather again in the aura of AP in another hundred years time and were eventually escorted out of the College precincts onto Queen Victoria Street, lit by the lamps of which AP apparently so disapproved, by Richmond Herald. In due course the published Conference proceedings will comprehensively reflect all that happened during the two core days on December 2nd and 3rd. There is no way that I can attempt to encapsulate the consistently high quality and excellence of all the contributors (and the responses they elicited) other than to observe that, as an enthusiast rather than an academic, I was never less than 100% engaged and disappointed only when, as always, we ran out of time at the end of Saturday afternoon. I shall highlight just three talks for brief personal comment, while wishing I could cover all the others. It was difficult to have to choose between the parallel sessions but I do not regret my decision to opt for the session at which Colin Donald led with "Awfully chic to be killed". Any analysis of what it is that makes people laugh or at least feel they are experiencing something uniquely comical has to be very brave; Colin succeeded splendidly in describing how a deliberate dissonance in register between subject matter and language used to describe it ... is the central source of Powell's most distinctive and entertaining effects.I found this talk quite riveting. The atmosphere of the highly overcrowded side room in which we massed for session 7A to hear Michael Barber talk about AP's friendship with Malcolm Muggeridge is also memorable. While not all of this would be new, it was related with a compelling fresh narrative drive and authority. Such was the lack of seating, that next to me, Hilary Spurling had no option but to crouch on the floor during the whole of this session. She too appeared to be listening very intently to AP's unofficial biographer. On the previous day, in our opening session, Ian Rankin had reflected on the way in which certain (but not all, especially crime) authors cause their characters to age and change their outlooks as time passes, citing the process employed in Dance by AP as a key influence on his own development of Inspector Rebus. He also observed, in passing, that school re-unions are intimations of mortality. That note of pessimism is unlikely to infect our next re-union Conference if the quality, vigour and sheer enterprise displayed in 2005 are anything to go by. Perhaps the Garden God will be keeping a kindly eye on us. First published in Issue 22 (Spring 2006) of the Society's Newsletter. |
Keynote Speakers
Other Speakers
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What The Delegates Said ...Thank you for a wonderful experience ... illuminating, stimulating and fun ... the best planned and implemented academic conference I have ever attended A triumphant event ... exceptionally good in every way Congratulations ... for such a stimulating and well-organised celebration Brilliantly organised and full of new insights into a writer I thought I knew well Memorable in every way: outstanding speakers … notable scholarship worn easily I congratulate you ... on organising a truly excellent conference ... the longer it went on the better it seemed to get What a centenary year ... the Centenary Newsletter was very special ... the conference was outstanding All worked with clockwork precision, every detail had been thought out, the location was perfect, and the papers were not only interesting and stimulating but extremely well chosen and contrasted An excellent session ... extremely informative and highly entertaining I greatly enjoyed the congress and felt privileged to have been allowed to give a paper You should be knighted ... for making the AP centennial such a creative, tasteful sequence of events Thank you for a most wonderful experience … which has given me food for thought for months and years to come I am absolutely delighted I attended |
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Conference ProceedingsThe conference proceedings are being prepared for publication and we hope they will be available before the end of 2006. Further details when available from the Hon. Secretary. 
Heraldic Crests (left) and [portraits of heralds make an atmospheric backdrop to delight the eager audience for the reading of Powell's play The Garden God at the College of Arms
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Conference Programme
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Photographs by Keith Marshall, Noreen Marshall, John Potter, Christine Berberich, Jeanne Reed, David Hallett | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Photographs © Copyright Keith Marshall, Noreen Marshall, John Potter, Christine Berberich, Jeanne Reed, David Hallett, 2006.
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© Copyright The Anthony Powell Society, 2006. All rights reserved. Last updated: 3 December 2006, Keith Marshall |