Tragic news came almost out of the blue in the monthly e-mail from the Paris branch of the National Union of Journalists:
Since My Condition prevents me from going either to today's funeral or to tonight's branch meeting, I'd like to say something here. My heart really goes out to Nicholas's family and especially to his wife, Véronique.
In sillier times, Nicholas and I found ourselves locked into a similar trap. For lack of any other appropriate label in the France of the early 1980s, we had declared ourselves "travailleurs indépendants", i.e. self-employed journalists of a professional category equivalent to young lawyers, doctors, writers...
Soon, terrifying chunks of our income and part of our souls were deep in the clutches of URSSAF, which then had no pretty face-mask. URSSAF, a fortress in a Paris suburb, was a monster of French administration at its most malign. We (and others) went that way as one of the required steps for state welfare cover, but URSSAF replied to no letters. 'Phone calls were nightmares. Forms and demands were regular.
Nicholas Powell, in one of many fits of shared exasperation when asked for the umpteenth time to declare his "employees", simply filled in the names of his cats. He encouraged me to do likewise, as we pored over a table spread with fearful paperwork.
Eventually, my only way out of URSSAF, which they befittingly called my "radiation", was to march into the keep of the castle itself and sit there until they agreed to hear and do away with me, which took a whole day. This radical move was my response to the only letter I have ever received written entirely in red ink, including the envelope, which I was ordered under bizarre rules of the time personally to fetch and sign for at the town hall, not even the post office.
Braver and far more fluent in French than I was then, Nicholas declared war against the whole state machine, of which URSSAF was only a part. He enlisted a lawyer, the help of friends like me, the British ambassador, and the NUJ and French unions.
He won a mighty victory.
When he was done, all British journalists living in France who earned most of their income as true freelances working for the foreign press, and not French employers, were henceforth allowed to make their social security payments in Britain but receive the benefits in this country. Without being charged the rates handed out to French self-employed people in dissimilar circumstances.
This battle has been taken on again since, by another admirable fellow in the branch, because years and several changes of government later, the French announced a change in the rules. Nobody was having this.
Powell thus put in a rare appearance last year at a branch meeting where I did the same. It was the last time I saw him and he was too pushed over a deadline to hang around, but far from any battlefields, I have the very warmest memories of wild times.
One night, we took my visiting mother to one of his favourite restaurants. Unfortunately, this was long before Eurostar. I had in my enthusiasm not bothered to think that my mum would have preferred not to have done the ferry and the haul into the Gare du Nord, then be dragged down to the Seine and a place where waiters were known to stroll on top of the tables and serve up digestifs with dead snakes in the bottles.
Nicholas, however, she liked at once. Taken by a man so tall, fine-featured, cultivated and elegant, she enjoyed his stories, the shared interest in all things French and a real nose for the fine arts.
Nearly two decades on, by January 2001, that flair was such that Nick telling the likes of Forbes.com readers "why it could be cheaper not to buy art in Europe" (he wasn't capable of perpetrating the horrible "to not buy" in their sub-editor's headline).
Arts we often discussed, especially music, were my "patch" before arriving in France, and his career moved ever deeper in that direction while my own veered elsewhere. Away from work, Nicholas long helped keep me up to date.
He also occasionally led me late at night to one or two Parisian "clubs" so dimly lit that I was both curious and glad not always to know exactly what was happening in some of the most shadowy alcoves. We emerged, unscathed, to find pre-dawn taxis. It was certainly a part of my education.
After our weddings and family lives began, we saw less and less of each other, though Catherine and I sometimes had dinner with Nicholas and Véronique, who is also a gifted denizen of the fine art world and a teacher in more ways than one. On this grievous day, I can only wish her and their children all the courage in the world, as well as lasting happy memories.
Nicholas became an increasingly specialised writer, producing catalogues and, I believe, at least one book, as well as many articles. In 1999, he contributed to a supplement in the IHT by announcing to the world that "In Paris, Autumn is Asian." When occasionally, in recent years, we were lucky enough to meet and chat, he asked me whether I'd yet visited the Drouot salesrooms he mentions there and told me it was "scandalous, Nicholas" that I hadn't, since I'd find it fascinating even if art collecting wasn't my thing. "Take Marianne too," he recommended.
Most of his recent online legacy as an arts correspondent is to be found at the 'Financial Times'. The opera I knew about, but I didn't realise that Nick was such a frequent, as well as fine, theatre critic. The best way to judge for yourselves is to to head for the FT search page, type in his name and select the categories 'Search this journalist' and then, say, "Last 3 years". For more, you have to be a subscriber, but some of Nicholas's earlier work, for 'Variety', is most easily reached via 'Find Articles'.
Not very long ago, Nicholas worked occasionally round the corner from here. I twice met him on Gergovie Street and the second time we made time to have lunch together. I'm glad we did. He was admitted to hospital shortly before I was confined, for the duration, to not very much further than this part of town.
Few journalists expect ever to leave more than an ephemeral record of years of hard work. A handful of the best don't even bother with bylines. But qualities, such as the attention to detail, the perseverance, the curiosity, the almost fierce earnestness that would suddenly burst into a cascade of wit, and the sense of fun, which I remember from that lunch and many a high time in the '80s, stay forever with family and friends.
There's no point in regretting I saw Nicholas Powell so infrequently after that decade when I was so lucky ever to have known him at all.
4:42:50 PM link 
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