Temporary Kings

One of the great novel-sequences in English Literature – a wonderful portrait of society, full of insight into the complexities of human behaviour, richly detailed and shrewdly funny. – William BoydDiscovering Anthony Powell’s “A Dance to the Music of Time” has been one of the greatest pleasures of my reading life. The cool elegance of the prose, the deliciously dry humour, the confident choreography of his characters made for an incomparable treat. Twelve volumes was simply not enough. – Michael Palin“A Dance To The Music of Time” is an epic, elegant masterpiece, so full of lightness and comedy that you’re unprepared for how it quietly wrecks your heart. – Lauren GroffPowell’s novel sequence is at once a rich chronicle of 20th-century English social life and an intricately wrought work of art. It is also extremely funny, in its sly fashion. – John BanvilleThe novels of Powell’s “A Dance to the Music of Time” themselves move hand in hand in intricate measure through the last century, bearing wisdom and understanding for the present. In an ever-quicker, ever-shallower world, his steadiness and wit reliably escort the reader into depth and patience. Nobody gives pattern to the spectacle of human existence like Powell. – Louisa YoungReading “A Dance to the Music of Time” was such a joyous experience, I remember wishing there’d been more than twelve volumes. – Roddy DoyleI re-read the “Dance” every five years or so and always find something new – the world has changed but the characters are evergreen. Everybody has a Widmerpool in their life. – Daisy GoodwinA masterful stylist and a wise, often hilarious observer of human nature and his times, Anthony Powell is an under-appreciated literary gem. The pleasures and dramas of the “Dance” continue to illuminate daily life. – Claire MessudComic, satisfying, thought-provoking, addictive * The Telegraph *[A] comic masterpiece * Irish Times *

Anthony Powell was an only child, born in 1905. As a young man he worked for a crumbling publishing business whilst trying to find time to write novels. He moved in a bohemian world of struggling writers and artists, which was to provide the raw material for much of his fiction. During the Second World War he served in Military Intelligence Liaison. He subsequently became a fiction reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement and for five years he was the literary editor of the now-defunct magazine Punch. Meanwhile he continued to work on the twelve-novel sequence ‘A Dance to the Music of Time’. He was the author of seven other novels, and four volumes of memoirs. His many reviews for the Daily Telegraph are also published in collected volumes. Anthony Powell died in March 2000.

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