April 2012 Guest Editor Paul Torday on Dance to the Music of Time...
This is a cheat, because this work consists of twelve novels. But they plot the lives of a group of characters as they weave in and out of each other’s lives in the period from just before the First World through to the nineteen sixties. For me the earlier ones are the best, describing the remorseless rise of the awful Widmerpool, the passionate romance between the narrator and a friend’s sister (somehow more interesting than his own later marriage) and a host of thinly disguised references to contemporary writers, musicians and artists. Fun working out who is who, and beautifully, beautifully written. One of the books that has really influenced my views on writing.
A QUESTION OF UPBRINGING. A BUYER'S MARKET. THE ACCEPTANCE WORLD. Anthony Powell's brilliant twelve-novel sequence chronicles the lives of over three hundred characters, and is a unique evocation of life in twentieth-century England. It is unrivalled for its scope, its humour and the enormous pleasure it has given to generations. These first three novels in the sequence follow Nicholas Jenkins, Kenneth Widmerpool and others, as they negotiate the intellectual, cultural and social hurdles which stand between them and the 'Acceptance World'.
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 was the author of seven other novels, and four volumes of memoirs, To Keep the Ball Rolling. He died in March 2000.
