Series of seventeen autograph and typed letters, cards and notes signed to the novelist Anthony Powell (progressing from "Dear Mr Powell" to "Dear Anthony"), sending him copies of The Less Deceived ("...Disregard George Hartley's fearful cover drawing, making me look Ernest Thesiger or someone. It still sells a few, despite GH. In Durham I found a shop with TLD and nothing else..."), The Whitsun Weddings ("...I hope you enjoy the book – by the ʻArmistice Day' poem, did you mean ʻNaturally the Foundation'? Nobody – well, hardly anybody – sees the point of this: one editor said (in rejecting it) that it was ʻrather hard on the Queen'....") and Required Writing ("...being treated far too indulgently, but suits me. No doubt someone will cut me down to size before long..."); complaining nevertheless of his failing powers ("...I feel like Fay Wray in the palm of King Kong – even when he strokes, it hurts. And sometimes he doesn't stroke. The worst thing is that poetry packed me up about five years ago, & so I feel like the worst kind of fraud..."); he also discusses Powell's magnum opus ("...How very kind of you to send me a copy of The Soldiers Art. I'm greatly honoured to have a copy personally inscribed by you, but this hasn't prevented my reading it at breakfast, or in the bath, in the most disrespectful and eager way. I found it fascinating, especially the reappearance of Stringham. Do I detect a further reversal of Fortune between him & Widmerpool – is his star going to rise again?... I thought our last glimpse of him showed certain tendencies towards the mystical experience. I think all the Army stuff is terribly funny – I do miss the Welsh element of The V of B, but all the minor military characters are splendid... I hope its success is equal to the rest, as I'm sure it will be..."); other topics covered include his photography ("...I know by experience that photographs never please... In the small one I fancy you & K[ingsley] look like father & son on Speech Day. You've just tipped him a fiver..."); Waugh's diaries (in a letter to Violet: "I hope Tony has now plumbed the enormities of EW'S journals to the full – I was most restrained, I think, in not spending my entire visit in reading them – and is now well away on a piece of criticism that is art itself. And I look forward to his memoirs!..."); cricket ("...cultivating my hay fever at Lord's..."); Mrs Thatcher and his refusal of the laureateship ("...Mrs T, whom I adore, has dropped me since the L'ship, though she was very nice about it. But I am clearly not ruling-class timber. I wish I liked the other members of her party 1/8 as much..."); people Powell has known ("...Did you know Lambert – Oh God, of course you did. Silly of me..."); other poets ("...I've never really liked Graves, either as a person or a poet..."); his future biographer Andrew Motion ("...looking more conventional since he joined C&W, but the bangle (or are there two?) persists. Previously he would turn up for lunch before a Poetry Book Society Board meeting in jeans and open shirt (and bangles of course): as I affect a dark suit, white shirt, & MCC ʻCity' tie I grew a little embarrassed at the spectacle we presented..."); their mutual friend Kingsley Amis ("...What is all this I read about Fabers commissioning Julian Barnes to write a life of Kingsley? Really, when everything libellous is cut out I can't think it will make interesting reading...") and Larkin's photograph of him used by Powell in the Penguin To Keep the Ball Rolling ("...Do you think you should ask him? It is really a very odd picture... Kingsley tells me that his first wife and her third husband (not to mention a little boy) are going to come and housekeep for him, when he has a house. What a strange situation! It reminds me of all those twitches on the thread at the end of Unconditional Surrender..."); the later letters showing increasing apprehension for what the future has to hold, one ending "Here comes the undertaker", another announcing "I haven't been very well since Christmas, but no one can find anything wrong... How dull old age is, apart from everything else!", the penultimate one confessing himself "very fed up at present; all going, or gone, wrong"; the series comprising eleven autograph letters (one to Lady Violet), two autograph cards, an autograph covering note, and three typed letters signed; plus a letter by his secretary and two letters by the editor of his letters, Anthony Thwaite, thanking Powell for their loan ("...all of them characteristic in various ways..."), some 30 pages, many on headed paper, some with humorous newspaper clippings attached, 4to and 8vo, Hull and elsewhere, 1958-1985