Early Years and Education
Enoch Powell was born in Stechford, Birmingham, England. He lived there for the first six years of his life before moving to King's Norton in 1918, where he lived until 1930. He was the only child of Albert Enoch Powell (1872–1956), a primary school headmaster, and his wife, Ellen Mary (1886–1953). Ellen was the daughter of Henry Breese, a Liverpool policeman and his wife Eliza, who had given up her own teaching career after marrying. The Powells were of Welsh descent, having moved to the developing Black Country during the early 19th century. His great-grandfather was a coal miner, and his grandfather had been employed in the iron trade.
Powell was a pupil at King's Norton Boys' School before moving to King Edward's School, Birmingham, where he studied classics (which would later influence his 'Rivers of Blood' speech), and was one of the few pupils in the school's history to attain 100% in an end-of-year English examination. He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1930 to 1933, during which time he fell under the influence both of the poet A. E. Housman, then Professor of Latin at the university, and of the writings of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. He took no part in politics at university.
It was while at Cambridge that Powell is recorded as having enjoyed one of his first close relationships. Indeed, according to John Evans, Chaplain of Trinity and Extra Preacher to the Queen, instructions were left with him to reveal after Powell's death that at least one of the romantic affairs of his life had been homosexual. Powell had particularly drawn the Chaplain's attention to lines in his First Poems (published 1937). Biographers such as Simon Heffer dispute this and have argued that this did not mean that he was homosexual; merely that he had not yet met any girls.
While at University, in one Greek prose examination lasting three hours, he was asked to translate a passage into Greek. Powell walked out after one and a half hours, having produced translations in the styles of Plato and Thucydides. For his efforts, he was awarded a double starred first in Latin and Greek, this grade being the best possible and extremely rare. As well as his education at Cambridge, Powell took a course in Urdu at the School of Oriental Studies, now the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, because he felt that his long-cherished ambition of becoming Viceroy of India would be unattainable without knowledge of an Indian language.
Read more about this topic: Enoch Powell
Famous quotes containing the words early years, early, years and/or education:
“If there is a price to pay for the privilege of spending the early years of child rearing in the driver’s seat, it is our reluctance, our inability, to tolerate being demoted to the backseat. Spurred by our success in programming our children during the preschool years, we may find it difficult to forgo in later states the level of control that once afforded us so much satisfaction.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)
“Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.”
—Eudora Welty (b. 1909)
“The anarchy, assassination, and sacrilege by which the Kingdom of France has been disgraced, desolated, and polluted for some years past cannot but have excited the strongest emotions of horror in every virtuous Briton. But within these days our hearts have been pierced by the recital of proceedings in that country more brutal than any recorded in the annals of the world.”
—James Boswell (1740–1795)
“I say that male and female are cast in the same mold; except for education and habits, the difference is not great.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)