A Dance to the Music of Time

Recommended by Mr Toller 

During the lockdown I have read Anthony Powell’s 12-novel sequence A Dance to the Music of Time. 

The narrator Nicholas Jenkins tells the story of his circle over a fifty-year period, starting at boarding school in 1921. Even during his army years in the Second World War (intensely vivid even though he does not see combat), his own personality is secondary to those of his acquaintances, friends and lovers who recur in different combinations throughout the sequence. 

The result is a panorama of English society in that half-century. Chief among the characters is Widmerpool, first encountered as an innately ludicrous contemporary at school ('so wet you could shoot snipe off him'), but, as a monstrously egotistical seeker after power at all costs, successful in an increasingly sinister way. He becomes a life peer and chancellor of a university, yet his final fate is grotesque. But the gallery of characters is vast, vital and varied.

Kenneth Widmerpool, as drawn by cartoonist Marc (the pen-name of journalist, editor and social satirist Mark Boxer, who illustrated the sequence's paperback editions in the 1970s)

The main thing about the sequence is that it is wonderfully well written. In every paragraph there are telling lines (often very funny), and throughout Powell gives a masterclass in 'show, don’t tell'. I found that I couldn’t stop reading; at the end I wanted to start at the beginning all over again.

I should have read Dance many years ago, but it has amply repaid the wait. I strongly recommend Hilary Spurling’s Invitation to the Dance as a companion handbook; it helped me keep track of the many characters and the time-scheme.