won a number of prizes, including the Percy Pemberton Prize, the Porson Prize, the Yeats Prize and the Lees Knowles. He won a distinction in Greek and Latin for Part I of his Classical Tripos and was awarded the Members' prize for Latin prose and the First Chancellor's Classical Medal. He also won the Cromer Greek essay prize of the British Academy in March 1933, having written on "Thucydides, his moral and historical principles and their influence in later antiquities". Also in 1933, Powell won the Browne Medal and delivered his winning essay in the Senate House, Cambridge. The Chancellor of Cambridge University, the Conservative Party leader Stanley Baldwin, told the Master of Trinity J. J. Thomson: "Powell reads as if he understands". Shortly before his finals in May 1933, Powell became ill with tonsillitis and then caught pyelitis. His neighbour in Trinity Great Court, Frederick Simpson, arranged that the Tripos examination papers be sent to the nursing home where he was convalescing. Despite having a temperature of 104 degrees when he sat the last of the seven papers, Powell gained a first class with distinction. The Cambridge classical scholar Martin Charlesworth said after Powell's graduation: "That man Powell is extraordinary. He is the best Greek scholar since Porson". As well as his education at Cambridge, Powell took a course in Urdu at the School of Oriental Studies, now the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, because he felt that his long-cherished ambition of becoming Viceroy of India would be unattainable without knowledge of an Indian language. Later, during his political career he would speak to his Indian-born constituents in Urdu. Powell went on to learn other languages, including Welsh (in which he edited jointly with Stephen J. Williams Cyfreithiau Hywel Dda yn ôl Llyfr Blegywryd, a text on Cyfraith Hywel, the medieval Welsh law), modern Greek, and Portuguese. Academic career After graduating from Cambridge, Powell stayed on at Trinity College as a fellow, spending much of his time studying ancient manuscripts in Latin and producing academic works in Greek and Welsh. He won the Craven travelling scholarship, which he used to fund travels to Italy, where he read Greek manuscripts in libraries. He also learned Italian. On his first trip to Italy, during 1933–1934, he visited Venice, Florence and Parma, and on his second excursion in 1935 he went to Venice, Naples and Turin. Powell was