The Powell Diaries

Two lives. One marriage. One Hundred Years of History.  A true story told in their own words.

On 1st September 1893 Will Powell, aged 26, boarded the Lutterworth. A three-masted sailing barque, bound for Wellington New Zealand. His log vividly captures that epic voyage. Forty-seven years later, in May 1940, Will and his beloved wife Annie are in the South of France.  With the German army approaching Paris, and desperate refugees flooding towards the Atlantic sea ports, the Powells decide to return to England. Then tragedy strikes, and Kate must make the perilous journey alone. A journey that leads her to the High Court at the Old Bailey.

Will's diary was a journal written for his family, to tell them about his journey to New Zealand in 1893, and to reassure them that he had arrived safely. Consequently, it is a vivid and detailed contemporary account of his adventure that required very little intervention on the author's my. His only role was to annotate some of the references within the journal for a 21stcentury readership. 

Kate's diary was written in France fortyseven years later, in her sixtysecond year. She recorded events in faint pencil as they unfolded, and later by recollection. Fifty years later, it was typed up by Barbara, one of her daughters. It appears to have been written both for herself, and for her children. What begins as a fond account of an idyllic summer in Provence becomes increasingly increasingly desperate when tragedy strikes just as the Germans advance and the escape routes begin to close. It is a story of one woman's amazing stoicism and resilience in the face of almost insurmountable odds.

Taken together these unique diaries provide a wonderful contemporary account of two lives coming together, building a business and a family in the turbulent years between the end of World War 1 and beginning of World War 2, when their marriage is suddenly torn apart, and one of them must flee alone as the enemy hordes advance.

It should appeal to anyone who loves maritime history, the 19th Century settlement of New Zealand, ancestry, the history of the 20th Century, the history of the Second World War and, above all, true stories of love, loss, and family.