All politics aside, he was a very fine specimen of the good old British eccentric.

He was an excellent linguist: When immigrants from Pakistan railed at him, at public meetings, for his racism, he reproved them in fluent Urdu. On another occasion he tackled a heckler on a radio program in Welsh. (And if anyone was foolish enough to charge him with mis-pronouncing a foreign name, he would insist on that person addressing him, for the duration of the exchanges, as “Ap Hwyl,” the Welsh original of “Powell.” I believe he also spoke Irish; though whether that accomplishment was of any assistance to him in his duties as an Ulster Unionist Member of Parliament, I do not know.)

Also a great Nietzschean. There used to be a program, also on the radio, in which public figures were given half an hour to explain their innermost passions and convictions. Powell talked pretty nonstop about Nietzsche…

Though he managed to interpose the memorable remark, in answer to a question about whether there was anything he regretted in life: “Yes. I regret not having been killed in the War.” [I.e. WW2, in which he served with distinction.]

The best Enoch Powell story is in Kingsley Amis’s memoirs. I don’t have a copy, and neither does my library. If any reader can find the passage and e-transcribe it for me somehow, I’d be deeply grateful. Amis, who was a pretty good judge of character, thought Powell was insane.