 The essayist Tariq Ali views Widmerpool as a giant among fictional characterisations of his kind, comparable to Baron de Charlus in Proust's epic In Search of Lost Time and Ulrich in Robert Musil's trilogy The Man Without Qualities. Ali asserts that Widmerpool is "in many ways a more inspired creation than Charlus". The circumstances of Widmerpool's death, whereby he is transformed from a believable person into "a sub-Dickensian grotesque" is, says Ali, a cause for much regret. Powell's A Writer's Notebook (2001) reveals that Powell originally considered a different ending for Widmerpool, in which he simply disappears into the mists, his ultimate fate an enigma. Ali argues that this would have been "much more in keeping with the dance of life and death".
