A schoolboy evacuee from London to North Wales during World War II, Christopher Powell said he "fell in love with the land and language of some of my forefathers." Born in Brazil, where his father worked for a British bank, he has Anglo-Welsh antecedents from his father, and Anglo-Scottish from his mother. An interest in language may have been sparked in his boyhood in Wales, where he learned to pronounce the place name that begins Llanfairpwllgwayng and carries on to a total of 58 letters.
After the war, at 17 he went on a visit to France, and "suddenly realized that the people around me were actually speaking in French. That was a very important moment for me," he said.
Powell attended Rutlish Grammar School in southwest London "just ahead of the arrival there of John Major" and St. John's College Oxford "well ahead of Tony Blair." He studied French and Spanish "with some extras" at both places. After graduating from Oxford he became a librarian looking after French and Spanish books at the University of London library. "I felt that wasn't sufficiently stimulating," he said. "I decided to go off to Spain and live by teaching English." He spent two years instructing adults and children, and found he enjoyed teaching his mother tongue.