SIR MAX HASTINGS WINS FEARED WIDMERPOOL AWARD

Added: (Wed Sep 15 2004)

Pressbox (Press Release) - NEWS RELEASE 15 September 2004 For Immediate Release


SIR MAX HASTINGS WINS FEARED WIDMERPOOL AWARD
Former editor may fall victim to curse

Former Fleet Street editor Sir Max Hastings is to receive one of the least desirable literary awards following a vote by the international membership of a leading literary society.

The Anthony Powell Society inaugurated an annual Widmerpool Award in 2003, for the public figure who most embodies the characteristics of Kenneth Widmerpool. Powell’s twelve volume sequence 'A Dance to the Music of Time' describes the astonishing rise through the ranks of Widmerpool, one of the greatest and funniest creations in twentieth century literature.

Widmerpool is variously pompous; self-obsessed and self-important; obsequious to those in authority and a bully to those below him; ambitious and pushy; ruthless; humourless; blind to the feelings of others; and has a complete lack of self-knowledge.

The award takes the form of an engraved "wrong kind of overcoat", purchased by the Society (at no small expense) from some local flea-market or charity shop

In 2003 the first winner (by several lengths) of the Widmerpool was Lord Irvine of Lairg. The nominations refer to his “unabashed exercise of the powers and privileges of his office without care of public opinion.” Barely two months after receiving the first ever Widmerpool Prize, Lord Irvine "retired." Not only that, but the abolition of the very office of Lord Chancellor (which dates from the 11th century) was announced. It is believed by some members that winners may be the subject of a curse similar to that which afflicted Powell’s character, Kenneth Widmerpool. The occult runs through the sequence as a recurring theme.

The Editor of The Anthony Powell Society Journal formally invited members and friends of the Society to submit nominations for this prestigious award. Nominees have to be living figures who are in the public eye. Nominations must be accompanied by a short citation in justification. Society members include leading academics and literary critics across the English speaking word.

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Among those received in 2004 were nominations of Lords Falconer, Hutton, and Butler; King Carl Gustav XVI of Sweden; Peter Mandelson; the Australian politician Alexander Downer; “the sublimely self-centered Greg Dyke and Andrew Gilligan”; and Alistair Campbell (for “the exercise of power without responsibility”).

However, the most popular nominee, now announced as 2004 winner of the Widmerpool Award, is Sir Max Hastings. The nominations were “on the grounds not only of physical traits (thick specks, booming manner) but for petty abuse of power” in using the medium of a review of a new biography of Powell as an excuse for personal score-settling (Powell had been very mildly disparaging about the Sir Max in his published Journals.) Hastings certainly reveals a Widmerpudlian lack of self-knowledge in referring to Powell as “priggish, pretentious and pompous” and “a snob.”

The Journal has dissociated itself from proposals to run a book on the form of nemesis expected to overtake Sir Max.

Further information about The Anthony Powell Society and the Anthony Powell Conference 2005 may be obtained from the Society's Honorary Secretary: Dr Keith C Marshall, 76 Ennismore Avenue, Greenford, Middlesex, UB6 0JW, UK or by e-mailing secretary@anthonypowell.org.uk. Information is also available on the Anthony Powell Resources website, www.anthonypowell.org.uk.


ENDS


For media information on the Anthony Powell Society or the Anthony Powell Conference in 2005 contact either Stephen Holden on 020 7514 6601 or 020 8245 3486, or Julian Allason, 07977 401619.