Denis Capel-Dunn
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Denis Cuthbert Capel-Dunn (Died 1945) was a British military bureaucrat immortalised by Anthony Powell as Kenneth Widmerpool, character from his A Dance to the Music of Time sequence of novels. He served as secretary to the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) between 1943 and 1945.
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[edit] Career
The son of a consular clerk in Leipzig, Capel-Dunn became a barrister, and then rose rapidly during the Second World War to the rank of Lt. Colonel in the Intelligence Corps.
Powell served under him whilst on attachment to the Cabinet Office for nine weeks in 1943. When Powell, an acting major, asked to be retained in his post for a further fortnight in order that his rank might become substantive, Capel-Dunn dismissed the request on the grounds that "My nerves wouldn't stand it".[1]
Noel Annan recorded Capel-Dunn's role in the JIC, noting that "as the youngest of the JIC members, and a civilian, it took [its chairman, Bill] Cavendish-Bentinck time and patience to galvanise his colleagues, and only when Churchill spoke could he at last set up a secretariat under an elusive, secretive barrister, Denis Capel-Dunn, and impose some sort of discipline upon them."[2]. Capel-Dunn was to remain secretary of the JIC until the end of hostilities, after which he presided over a post-war review of intelligence published for classified circulation under his name in 1945.[3]
An accomplished Whitehall in-fighter, Capel-Dunn over-reached himself when he attempted to take control of the Security Service (MI5). Appearing unannounced at their headquarters on 24th October 1944, he claimed to be acting on behalf of the JIC in an investigation into all sources of intelligence and their distribution. When asked by the Director-General for his credentials he was unable to produce them. Threatened with an enquiry of the Minister, Capel-Dunn withdrew and no more was heard of the investigation.[4]However he achieved a revenge of sorts when, at war's end, he published (for classified circulation only) an assessment of intelligence operations.
Capel-Dunn died in an air crash in 1945 returning with other officials from the San Francisco Conference that established the United Nations. As the royal biographer Kenneth Rose has pointed out, had he not sacked Powell the novelist would probably have shared his fate. "As it was, the subordinate survived to make his boss immortal".[5] His early death cut off a career that seemed set for a ministerial position in politics or as a Whitehall Mandarin. Powell attributes to Widmerpool a Life Peerage and chancellorship of a redbrick university.
[edit] Personality
"Like Widmerpool, Capel-Dunn was a very fat, extremely boring, overwhelmingly ambitious arriviste. His conversations were hideously detailed and humourless", recalled Mr John Colvin, former ambassador to Mongolia, who was a member of the same club, the St James, in which Capel-Dunn was known as 'Young Bloody'.[6]
Powell told Hugh Massingberd that "I only knew the Papal Bun for nine weeks, but he certainly made an impression. I've never met anyone so materialistic in outlook. But then, of course, he wasn't at school ['school' being Powell's shorthand for Eton] with me so he was only partly the inspiration for Widmerpool. Fiction isn't as straightforward as that."[7]
[edit] Character model
The novelist planted clues in the third volume of his autobiography that Widmerpool was based on Capel-Dunn, referring to the nickname of an unnamed officer under whom he worked briefly in the Cabinet Office during the war. This is The Papal Bun - "a play upon his double barreled surname, creed, demeanour, personal appearance ... a never failing source of laughter."[8]
Kenneth Rose discovered that the historian Desmond Seward had managed to deduce Widmerpool's identity. This Rose put to Powell, who, in his elliptical way, replied: "My impression is that Seward, a most amusing fellow, is on to something there ...".[9] The identification of Widmerpool as based upon Denis Cuthbert Capel-Dunn was then confirmed in Powell's Journals. [10]
It should be noted that A Dance to the Music of Time is not a Roman à clef and that Widmerpool's career is not synononymous with that of Capel-Dunn. Indeed pre-War episodes owe something to other sources, as do Widmerpool's later career as a spy, university chancellor and cult member. Unlike Widmerpool, Capel-Dunn was never promoted to full colonel, possibly on account of fears of the position he might then assume in the Intelligence Corps.
In the Channel Four TV adaptation of the novels Widmerpool was played by the Shakespearean actor Simon Russell Beale who was said to bear a resemblance to Capel-Dunn. Russell Beale was subsequently elected President of the Anthony Powell Society, an office he retains.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Desmond Seward, Journal of the Anthony Powell Society, 2003
- ^ Changing Enemies: The Defeat and Regeneration of Germany, Noel Annan, W.W. Norton & Co.
- ^ Intelligence culture and intelligence failure in Britain and the United States by Philip H.J. Davies, Brunel Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies; Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Volume 17, Number 3, October, 2004
- ^ The Guy Liddell Diaries vol II, edited by Nigel West, Routledge, London 2005.
- ^ Kenneth Rose, Sunday Telegraph, 29 Dec 1991
- ^ Daily Telegraph, 30 Dec 1991
- ^ The Spectator, 14th Dec 2002
- ^ Anthony Powell, To Keep the Ball Rolling: Faces in My Time, pp 155-6
- ^ Sunday Telegraph, 29 Dec 1991
- ^ Anthony Powell, Journals 1990-1992, pp 151, 161-2
