The Masters  
The Powell & Pressburger Pages

Dedicated to the work of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and all the other people, both actors and technicians who helped them make those wonderful films.

A lot of the documents have been sent to me or have come from other web sites. The name of the web site is given where known. If I have unintentionally included an image or document that is copyrighted or that I shouldn't have done then please email me and I'll remove it.

I make no money from this site, it's purely for the love of the films.

[Any comments are by me (Steve Crook) and other members of the email list]

  Steve's Logo


A visit to Avening church and cemetery
By: Andrew Smaje
Sunday 17th October 2004


Hi Steve

I've attached 4 pictures of that recent visit I paid to Micky's grave - a day without much in the way of light, so my grainy b/w film tried hard, but failed, to pick out textural contrasts.

The flowers which are sprouting as tall as the grave, are ox-eye daisies, I think; and Micky had some lush mushrooms just coming through too.

For anyone who hasn't visited the grave (and the beautiful church where Micky and Thelma were married), I guess you'd start to search for the gravestone of such a remarkable visual artist to be amongst the 17th and 18th century headstones, tombs and mausolea which dot in slants around the church, which itself rises on an unlikely knoll - the graves fall away down the hill with ramshackle randomness.

But no, Micky is buried alongside Pamela Brown, who died of course much earlier than he; so they are both in a side section of much more modern headstones and absolutely flat land.

This means that the Powell headstone stands out with eccentric vigour amongst some fairly plain production-line tributes: hewn from rock and resembling the kind of stone you'd expect to see above a cliff on storm-battered Foula - Peter Manson: Gone Over.

Sorry to say I didn't have a colour film, to capture the only colour in the place on that day: the tree by the church gate, with berries as red as those red shoes.

This would be the third or fourth time I've paid a short trip from Bath to Avening, and it's always very moving.

And for a place full of centuries of those passed away, very alive.

Andrew

Michael Powell
1905 - 1990
Film Director and Optimist
 
Another Avening Grave
Looking much graver


Other P&P trips