Jim Powell (17 May 1949 – 20 May 2023) was a British novelist, and a direct descendant of the 19th-century novelist Thomas Love Peacock. Powell also had careers in advertising and pottery, and was a political activist.

Born in London, Jim Powell was educated at Charterhouse School and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he took a master's degree in history.

Powell's first novel, The Breaking of Eggs, was published in 2010. It deals with the impact of fascism and communism on 20th-century Europe. The novel was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize for first novels.^[1] It was reviewed in The New Zealand Herald.^[2] Powell's second novel, Trading Futures, was published in 2016, and his third novel, Things We Nearly Knew, in 2018.

In 1971, after Cambridge, Powell found employment at Wasey, Campbell-Ewald, an advertising agency in London. He went on to become managing director of Michael Bungay DFS, another agency.^[3][4]

Powell was a co-founder of Holdenby Designs, a business designing and producing pottery.^[3]

At the 1987 general election, Powell stood as the Conservative Party candidate in Coventry North West, but lost to the incumbent Labour MP Geoffrey Robinson.^[5] He was a friend of senior politician Francis Pym whom he assisted with (Pym's) 1985 book The Politics of Consent.^[6]

Jim Powell died of emphysema on 20 May 2023, at the age of 74.^[3]