Lady Violet Powell

Who was Lady Violet Powell?

Lady Violet Powell, born Violet Georgiana Pakenham, third daughter of Thomas Pakenham, 5th Earl of Longford and Lady Mary Julia Child Villiers, was a writer and critic. She was educated at St Margaret's School, Bushey.

She married Anthony Powell on 1 December 1934 at All Saints Anglican Church, Ennismore Gardens, Knightsbridge; they had two children, Tristram and John.

A member of a highly literary family, Lady Violet's brothers were Edward and Frank, while her sisters included Pansy and Mary Pakenham. She was herself a distinguished memoirist and biographer. Her The Life of a Provincial Lady, on the life of E. M. Delafield, has been called by one critic "one of the best literary biographies of a British writer in the twentieth century". Those who knew the couple well believed that Lady Violet made significant contributions to the richness, depth and polish of her husband's work.

She is generally taken to be the model for the character of Isobel Tolland in her husband's novel sequence A Dance to the Music of Time.