Jim Powell
Jim Powell was born in London in 1949. He was educated at Charterhouse and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he obtained a Master’s degree in history. In 2018, he was awarded a doctorate by the University of Liverpool. A direct descendant of the 19th century novelist Thomas Love Peacock, he was amongst the ‘Twelve of the Best New Novelists’ chosen by BBC2’s ‘The Culture Show’ in 2011.
His first novel, The Breaking of Eggs, dealt with the impact of fascism and communism on 20th century Europe; it was serialised on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Book at Bedtime’, read by Toby Jones. His second novel, Trading Futures, related the desperate, sometimes hilarious, mid-life crisis of a 60-year-old City trader. His third novel, Things We Nearly Knew, was set at an unspecified time in a bar in an unnamed small town in America. His historical work, Losing the Thread: Cotton, Liverpool and the American Civil War, based on his PhD thesis, was published by Liverpool University Press.
After Cambridge, Jim went into advertising, becoming the Managing Director of the London office of a major American company. He then moved into ceramics, setting up pottery factories in Northamptonshire and Stoke-on-Trent to produce hand-painted tableware for top UK and international stores. Some products are exhibited in the Victoria & Albert Museum.
Jim was active in politics for many years, running election campaigns for Francis Pym and Leon Brittan and collaborating with Pym on his bestselling book, The Politics of Consent. He contested the 1987 General Election in Coventry and was later Deputy Leader of Daventry District Council.
Jim’s wife, Kay, is the author of What Not to Write, a bestselling guide to written English, and Then a Wind Blew, a novel set during the 1970s Rhodesia/Zimbabwe war. Until Jim’s death in May 2023, they divided their time between their cottage near Cambridge and their house in South-West France.
The two volumes of his While the Music Lasts novel will be published in September and November 2025 and they are now available for pre-order:
What they said about Jim Powell’s other works
The Breaking of Eggs (Weidenfeld & Nicolson UK / Penguin US; 2010; serialised on BBC Radio 4)
‘A fluent, unusual and memorable novel’ Times Literary Supplement
‘Moves cleverly between the comic, the serious and the terribly painful’ The Guardian
‘A fresh, moving, and remarkable story. Unforgettable’ Publishers Weekly
‘Meshes storytelling potency with historical erudition’ Boston Globe
‘Intriguing, skilfully written and wholly enjoyable’ Sydney Morning Herald
Trading Futures (Picador, 2016)
‘An admirably slim encore to Powell’s well-received first novel’ The Times
‘With gallows humour and observational wit … a vivid portrait of a man in meltdown’ Daily Mail
‘Powell is very good on the sense of lost youth, nostalgia and what might have been’ Financial Times
‘Alternately hilarious and chilling … an observation on life that would not have displeased Emil Cioran’ Le Figaro
‘A shrewd and witty book’ Sydney Morning Herald
Things We Nearly Knew (Picador, 2018)
‘An engrossing third novel’ Financial Times
‘This novel has a wry charm that grips you right to the sombre finish’ Daily Mail
‘An accessible third novel … the plot is expertly spun out’ Sunday Times
Losing the Thread: Cotton, Liverpool and the American Civil War (Liverpool University Press, 2021)
‘One of the most important works published in the field … Powell cuts through received wisdom with a sharp knife’ American Nineteenth Century History
‘Historians reading this book in the future will rely on it for the Civil War period – it is as near a final word as can be imagined’ Enterprise & Society (Cambridge University Press)
‘Powell is a convincing myth-debunker… a comprehensive and illuminating account of how the American Civil War affected the Liverpool raw cotton market’ Journal of Economic History (Cambridge University Press)
‘An impeccably researched contribution to literature on the influence of the American Civil War on Britain’ Australasian Journal of American Studies (Monash University)
‘A carefully crafted piece of research that corrects lazy historical assumptions and lays bare an important moment in British history’ University of Kent, The English Historical Review