 The novel sequence A Dance to the Music of Time comprises 12 volumes spanning a period of approximately 50 years; from the early 1920s to the first years of the 1970s. The title is taken from Nicolas Poussin's 1634 – 36 painting of the same name. Through the eyes of a narrator, Nicholas Jenkins, the reader observes the changing fortunes of a varied collection of mainly upper-class characters. Their ambience is a bohemian world of art, literature and music, intermingled with more the practical spheres of politics, business and the military. In a 1971 study of the novels, the journalist and editor Dan McLeod summarised the theme of the sequence as that of a decaying establishment, confronted by "aggressive representatives from the middle classes elbowing their way up". The latter are prepared to suffer any number of indignities in their pursuit of power but the establishment proves capable of resisting the advance of "all but the most thick-hided and persevering" of outsiders. Kenneth Widmerpool becomes the principal embodiment of these incomers.
