The Kindly Ones

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.
Discovering 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 make for an incomparable treat. – 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 Groff
Powell’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.
The 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 Young
Reading “A Dance to the Music of Time” was such a joyous experience, I remember wishing there’d been more than twelve volumes. – Roddy Doyle
A 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 Messud
I 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 Goodwin
He has wit, style, and panache, in a world where those qualities are in permanently short supply * The New York Review of Books *
[A] comic masterpiece * Irish Times *

Anthony Powell was born in 1905. After working in publishing and as a scriptwriter, he began to write for the Daily Telegraph in the mid-1930s. He served in the army during World War II and subsequently became the fiction reviewer on the TLS. Next came five years as literary editor of Punch. He was appointed a Companion of Honour in 1988. In addition to the twelve-novel sequence, A Dance to the Music of Time, Anthony Powell is the author of seven other novels, and four volumes of memoirs, To Keep the Ball Rolling.

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