MS 995

Reference code

MS 995

Title

Papers of Sir John Heygate relating to Anthony Powell

Level

Sub-fonds

Administrative / Biographical history

Sir John Edward Nourse Heygate (1903–1976) was a Northern Irish journalist and novelist. He was the son of Frances Harvey and Arthur Heygate, a housemaster at Eton College. Educated at Eton College (1916–1920) and Balliol College, Oxford (1920–1923), he later trained briefly for the Foreign Office at Heidelberg in 1926.

In the late 1920s Heygate moved in the circle of socialites known as the ‘Bright Young People’, which included his Eton and Oxford friend, the writer Anthony Powell. He worked as an assistant news editor at the BBC but resigned following an affair with Evelyn Gardner, wife of Evelyn Waugh. After Gardner’s divorce, the couple married in 1930. From 1932 he worked for the Gaumont-British Picture Corporation in collaboration with the German UFA film studios near Berlin. Heygate and Gardner divorced in 1936, and he later married actress Gwyneth Lloyd, with whom he had two sons, George and Richard; this marriage also ended in divorce.

Heygate held staunch right-wing views and attended the Nuremberg Rally in 1935. During the Second World War he served in the Royal Artillery, mostly in India. From the late 1940s, suffering from bouts of depression, he moved to Ballarena, his family home in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. He remained a close friend and literary confidant of Anthony Powell throughout his life. He died by suicide in 1976.

Anthony Dymoke Powell (1905–2000) was an English novelist and literary critic. The only child of Philip and Maud Wells-Dymoke, he was educated at Eton College (1919–1923) and Balliol College, Oxford (1923–1926), where he formed lasting friendships with Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Harold Acton, Henry Yorke and John Heygate. After working in publishing at Duckworth & Co. and briefly in film, he became a full-time writer.

During the Second World War Powell served in the Welsh Regiment and later the Intelligence Corps, rising to Major and receiving foreign honours for his liaison work with Allied forces. His greatest achievement was the twelve-volume A Dance to the Music of Time (1951–1975), alongside other novels, plays, biographies, memoirs, diaries and critical essays. He was also a prolific reviewer for leading periodicals including the Daily Telegraph, Punch and the Spectator.

Powell was awarded the CBE in 1956 and made a Companion of Honour in 1988. He declined a knighthood in 1973. In 1934 he married author and historian Lady Violet Georgiana Pakenham (1912–2002) with whom he had two sons, Tristram and John. From 1952 they lived at The Chantry, near Frome, Somerset. He died in 2000.

For a more detailed biographical history, see the Anthony Powell archive ECL MS 434.

Date

1949-1976

Extent & medium

1 box containing 5 files

Content description

Papers of Sir John Heygate relating to his friend Anthony Powell, comprising typescript and manuscript letters and postcards, written by Anthony Powell to Heygate, charting the progress of each of Powell’s 12 novels of his Dance to the Music of Time sequence, between 1949 and Heygate’s death in 1976; also, letters sent to Sir John Heygate about Anthony Powell and news-cuttings, articles, interviews with and reviews of Anthony Powell’s work, assembled by Heygate

Provenance

Purchased by Toby Wyles from Bonhams, Dec 2019. Gifted to ECL by Toby Wyles 15 Sep 2025.

Arrangement

Disordered. Artificial arrangement by the archivist.

Associated material

ECL: MS 434 Anthony Powell archive; ECL MS 737 includes some postcards from Anthony Powell in the Wyndham Lloyd archive; ECL MS 971 TLS to Neville Braybrooke