Dance to the Music of Time Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), A Dance to the Music of Time The Wallace Collection, London. Used by permission. Poussin's painting above provides both the title for Anthony Powell's series and also the inspiration for its structure and themes. "These classical projections, and something from the fire, suddenly suggested Poussin's scene in which the Seasons, hand in hand and facing outward, tread in rhythm to the notes of the lyre that the winged and naked greybeard plays. The image of Time brought thoughts of mortality: of human beings, facing outward like the Seasons, moving hand in hand in intricate measure, stepping slowly, methodically sometimes a trifle awkwardly, in evolutions that take recognizable shape: or breaking into seemingly meaningless gyrations, while partners disappear only to reappear again, once more giving pattern to the spectacle: unable to control the melody, unable, perhaps, to control the steps of the dance." (A Question of Upbringing, 2) Introduction Anthony Powell wrote the 12-novel sequence called Dance to the Music of Time during the years 1950-1974.

A comic masterpiece, it follows the life of Nicholas Jenkins, the narrator, for nearly fifty years, from, 1926 to 1971. Here, Powell is seen holding his favorite cat, Trelawney, who was named for the disreputable mystic, Dr. Trelawney, of the sixth volume, The Kindly Ones. This set of pages, dedicated to Powell's comic epic, is the product of two English classes at Phillips Academy, Andover -- English 574, "The Longest Novel Ever Written." During the academic years 2001-2 and 2007-8 students, mostly twelfth graders, studied the entire duodecology, book by book. As they finished each one, they produced essays on various critical issues raised within it. What has resulted is a sort of intellectual journal of their reading, as they worked deeper and deeper into this fascinating, complex work. Each set of essays appears on the page dedicated to the relevant novel. For those unfamiliar with Dance, each page begins with a short synopsis and a character list for that novel -- both written by the class. Each list mentions only significant characters. The essays follow.

Page numbers refer to the University of Chicago editions, which are identical to the revised Little Brown and Heinemann ones. Two final remarks: members of the class have some great debts to record. First, we owe many thanks to the Wallace Collection, and its representative Ms. Emma Baudey, who have generously allowed us use of the Poussin image while our class is in progress. Those who wish to visit the collection virtually or in person can find much information at their website: Dance to the Music of Time, Volume 2 by Anthony Powell · OverDrive: eBooks, audiobooks and videos for libraries Fiction Literature Volume 2 contains novels four, five and six of the Dance To The Music Of Time sequence. 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. This volume contains novels four, five and six of the sequence, Singapore, New Zealand, United Kingdom Format Adobe EPUB eBook 783.1 KB Anthony Powell (Author) 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... Dance to the Music of Time, Volume 4 by Anthony Powell · OverDrive: eBooks, audiobooks and videos for libraries Fiction Literature Volume 4 contains novels ten to twelve of the Dance To The Music Of Time sequence. 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. Volume 4 contains the last three novels in the sequence: Books do Furnish a Room; Temporary Kings; Hearing Secret Harmonies Singapore, New Zealand, United Kingdom Format Adobe EPUB eBook 850.2 KB Anthony Powell (Author) 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... Anthony Powell - Telegraph Obituaries Anthony Powell Anthony Powell, who has died aged 94, was a master of irony, wit, paradox and social delineation, notably in his panoramic magnum opus of English life, A Dance to the Music of Time. Photo: REX FEATURES 12:01AM BST 29 Mar 2000 In this compelling 12-volume sequence, Powell created a complete universe into which the reader could enter fully, coming to savour its own special inner mythology, jokes, ramifications and recurring characters. A cast of more than 500 was deftly choreographed across some 70 years in a million-word chronicle at once comic and profound. The experiences of Nicholas Jenkins, the narrator, ran parallel with those of Tony Powell in some obvious respects - Eton, Oxford, publishing, scriptwriting, artistic and aristocratic life, the Army in the Second World War, literary magazines (Powell was literary editor of Punch), home in the West Country. But, as his own entertaining four volumes of memoirs (and more recent three volumes of journals) showed, the Dance was not by any means straight autobiography.

Indeed, the author's pet hate was people suggesting that such-and-such a character might have been based on So-and-So; such literal-mindedness betrayed, in his view, a crass ignorance of the processes of fiction. In the opening volume, A Question of Upbringing (1951), the reader is introduced to a group of schoolboys - the charming, if feckless, Charles Stringham, whose appearance is characteristically compared to an Elizabethan miniature; the brash Peter Templer; and the memorably odious Widmerpool, notorious for having worn "the wrong kind of overcoat" as a new boy - as well as to Jenkins's awkward Uncle Giles, who styles himself "a bit of a radical". Related Articles Rivers Scott 21 Sep 2014 As the Dance progresses, Widmerpool develops into a power-crazed monster, doing for Stringham, Templer and many others, before receiving - in the last volume, Hearing Secret Harmonies (1975) - his come-uppance as a deranged Labour life peer in a sinister hippy commune. Along the way Jenkins encounters - and fortuitously re-encounters - a gallery of personalities worthy of Dickens.

Because the Dance took in the odd titled person and spanned a sequence, Powell was inevitably called "the English Proust". In The Military Philosophers (1968) Jenkins paid suitable homage on his visit to Cabourg, Proust's "Balbec". But while Powell enormously admired the French writer he jibbed at such lazy labels. "For one thing", he used to say, "I am not homosexual." For another, such a comparison underrated Powell's originality. Then there were the critics who, noticing that he dealt with the eccentricities of upper-class life, would bracket Powell with Evelyn Waugh. His admirers found him a more sympathetic and three-dimensional writer than Waugh and, for all his conventional manner, a surprisingly avant-garde novelist. Powell was more concerned with the study of character and the unravelling significance of ostensibly minor incidents than with any contrived plot or "message". The narrative would revolve around a few set-pieces, described with a painterly eye for detail; crisp, staccato, even elliptical, dialogue, pages of fastidious philosophical rumination. Powell's style was idiosyncratic.

He would mix elaborate elegance with ingeniously compressed shorthand, liberally employ parentheses, eschew conjunctions; the effect was comic, satisfying, thought-provoking, addictive. Among Powell's fans some preferred his early pre-war novels to the Dance. Certainly his first book, Afternoon Men (1931), was a brilliantly accomplished comedy of non-manners. Perhaps his comic masterpiece, though, was his third novel, From a View to a Death (1933), a beautifully observed story of a bearded artist, the "Superman" Zouch, bent on crashing county society. The scene in which the moustachioed Major Fosdick (who found it "restful" to repair to his dressing room, clad in large picture-hat and black sequin evening dress, to read Through the Western Highlands with Rod and Gun) absent-mindedly opens his front door to the local squire while still in drag, and then proceeds to conduct a conversation about the shooting rights to a nearby copse, ranks among the funniest passages in English literature. A particular strength of Powell's was his punctilious attention to getting everything right.

Every name, every title, every nuance, indeed every word, was unerringly spot-on. John Bayley wrote virtually an entire essay on Powell's use of "lacustrine" to describe Venice in Temporary Kings (1973). In maintaining such accuracy - a rare quality in a creative writer - Powell was helped both by his wife, Lady Violet, whose ear for a solecism was as acute as his own; and by his own passion for genealogy. Powell's fascination for family history sometimes seemed a source of embarrassment to his more self-consciously "literary" admirers, who were inclined to ascribe it to the novelist's need for a harmless distraction, like stamp-collecting. But Powell's interest in genealogy was absolutely fundamental to his life and work. The Dance was underpinned by a framework of labyrinthine connections that are the very stuff of genealogy. It was typical of Powell to begin the first volume of his memoirs, To Keep the Ball Rolling (1976-82), with 40 pages devoted to his antecedents. Typical, too, that the paperback publishers excised this excursion into genealogy.

THE POWELL pedigree in Burke's Landed Gentry - to which he contributed some illuminating reflections on the fluidity of society - was traced back, by himself, to the early kings and princes of Wales. Those who erroneously believed the pronunciation of his surname as "Poel" was some sort of affectation would be reminded by Powell about "Old King Coel". Powell, a dedicated antiquary - like the subject of his biography John Aubrey and His Friends (1948) - undertook assiduous genealogical research between novels, publishing his findings in the learned journal of the Radnorshire Society. On his mother's side, he descended from the Dymokes of Scrivelsby in Lincolnshire, a long-established squirearchical family that holds the hereditary office of the Honourable the Queen's Champion and Standard Bearer of England. Anthony Dymoke Powell was born in London on December 21, 1905, the only child of Lt-Col Philip Powell of the Welch Regiment. His awareness of place was early sharpened by the frequent moves imposed by his father's military obligations.

"My earliest recollection," he wrote in Infants of the Spring (1976), "is of snow descending in small flakes outside the window of an hotel bedroom." Part of his childhood was spent near Aldershot, in "a large bungalow of Indian type" on which he was later to draw for "Stonehurst" in The Kindly Ones (1962). The sensitive depiction of his parents' servants in the novel gave the lie to those who suggested that Powell was only capable of writing about the upper classes. Slight of build, with a faintly pointed head and prominent upper lip, Tony attended Gibbs's day school in South Kensington, where he became aware of his inability to play games; "also of the unpleasantness of some boys - a necessary prelude to the unpleasantness of not a few men". A phlegmatic youth, he survived the rigours of a philistine preparatory school in Kent, where he made friends with Henry Yorke (the future novelist Henry Green). At Eton he revelled in the tolerantly sceptical atmosphere of what was agreed to be the "worst" house in the school, where his fag-master was Lord David Cecil.

Powell especially enjoyed his time in the Drawing Schools under Sidney Evans and was a founding member of the Eton Society of Arts, along with Yorke, Robert Byron and Harold Acton. He was its last survivor. In 1922 he contributed a drawing of "Colonel Caesar Cannonbrains of the Black Hussars", in the manner of Lovat Fraser, to the Eton Candle, a publication under the pushy editorship of Brian Howard (part-model for Anthony Blanche in Brideshead Revisited). Powell's experience of Oxford, where he read history at Balliol, was far removed from the fantasy world of Brideshead. His phrase about "the crushing melancholy of the undergraduate condition" in the opening sentence of Books Do Furnish A Room (1971) summed up how he felt there. He unwisely confided to Maurice Bowra that Oxford had little effect on him. Aside from fancy-dress parties at the rackety Hypocrites Club (where he affected military attire) and a visit to Lady Ottoline Morrell at Garsington, his career there was uneventful. Powell started work at the small London publishing house of Duckworth and took rooms in the unlikely area of Shepherd Market.

He used to recall, deprecatingly, that he was a publisher "in the sense that I used to empty the inkpots, interview wrapper design artists, deal with lunatics, that sort of thing"; but it was Powell who was responsible for bringing Evelyn Waugh - with whom he had made friends at the Central School of Arts & Crafts in Holborn - to Duckworth. The firm published Waugh's first book, on Rossetti, but later turned down his first novel Decline and Fall on grounds on obscenity. Powell, who remained with Duckworth until 1935, had more luck with placing his own novels in-house. The first, Afternoon Men, about an aimless group of bachelors on the fringes of bohemian London, contained the germ of A Dance to the Music of Time. There are, for instance, echoes of Widmerpool in the unprepossessing painter Pringle, whose false nose at a party lends his face "an unaccustomed dignity". In the mid-Thirties Powell decided to try his hand as a film scriptwriter.

Besides working on "quota quickies" for Warner Brothers at Teddington with Terence Rattigan, he had a brief spell in Hollywood - notable only for an encounter with Scott Fitzgerald in a studio canteen - but he claimed that not a line of his ever reached the screen. He captured some of the bizarre absurdities of the film world in his fourth novel, Agents and Patients (1936). TOWARDS the end of that decade found himself in lowish water, only keeping afloat by reviewing batches of novels ("the worst job in the world") for The Daily Telegraph, Times Literary Supplement and Spectator. He had a briefer but more exhilarating stint on the ill-fated weekly Night and Day, which folded when the child star Shirley Temple successfully sued Graham Greene over a film review in which he referred to her "dimpled depravity". Powell's fifth novel, What's Become of Waring, appeared in 1939 and - possibly because of the shadow of the war - did not prove a success. It was the first time he had tried a first-person narrator. During the war Powell served initially with his father's regiment, the Welch.

Like Jenkins in the Dance, he "knew despair" at the Tactical School housed in the neo-Norman Gosford Castle (alias Castlemallock). Indeed, the three authentically downbeat war volumes of Dance - The Valley of Bones (1964), The Soldier's Art (1966) and The Military Philosophers (1968) - closely correspond to Powell's own experiences. Thus Jenkins's encounter with the stylised "Field Marshal" ("I'll shoot 'em up. Is that clear. Shoot 'em up.") is more or less identical to Major Powell's with Montgomery in 1944. Powell had transferred to the Intelligence Corps three years earlier and served as a liaison officer with the Allied Forces. He was awarded the Czech Order of the White Lion, the Luxembourg Order of the Oaken Crown and Croix de Guerre and the Belgian Order of Leopold II. After the war he completed his research on his study of John Aubrey, a hitherto undervalued 17th-century figure, and also published a volume of selections from Aubrey's Brief Lives.

He looked after the fiction side of the Times Literary Supplement until accepting Malcolm Muggeridge's offer to be literary editor of Punch in 1952. He and Muggeridge had both been friends of George Orwell in the Forties. In Infants of the Spring, Powell gave a revealing account of his first meeting with Orwell (as Blair, an unknown senior at Eton) at the Cafe Royal in 1941. Powell was wearing his patrol uniform, and feared that Orwell might think him the representative of a brutal military caste. With serious look and urgent voice, Orwell asked him a question: "Do your trousers strap under the foot?" Receiving Powell's affirmative, Orwell nodded: "That's really the important thing." On Punch, Powell tried his hand at literary parody, scoring a bull's-eye on Kipling, with "If, on the rocks, without soda". He also wrote full-page reviews and instituted a shorter, snappier form of notice. In his memoirs Powell painted a picture of life in Bouverie Street as "far from hearty Falstaffian mirth".

His friendship with Muggeridge, whose "television personality" he found increasingly alienating, eventually foundered when the Sage of Robertsbridge made some disobliging remarks about Casanova's Chinese Restaurant (1964), the sixth volume of A Dance to the Music of Time. After 24 years, in 1975, the great 12-volume saga was finished. In 1997, after several abortive attempts, Dance was adapted for television (by Hugh Whitemore). Powell himself caught the play-writing bug in the Sixties after an Italian, Riccardo Aragno, adapted Afternoon Men for the stage. His own original plays, The Garden God and The Rest I'll Whistle, were placed in the managerial hands of William Donaldson and Binkie Beaumont respectively, but neither was, in the event, produced. Being "in principle firmly against censorship", Powell agreed to be a witness for the defence in that Sixties cause celbre, the Lady Chatterley Trial, but was not called.

The victorious Penguin Books later fell out with Powell himself over their "loutish" treatment of his friend Osbert Lancaster, who drew some evocative covers for the Dance volumes in paperback - as later, for another publisher, did Mark Boxer. Having stayed on at Punch after Muggeridge left in 1957, Powell was sacked as literary editor the next year by the unsympathetic new editor, Bernard Hollowood, a Minor Counties cricketer and City cartoonist. He then resumed regular reviewing for The Daily Telegraph, where his last paragraphs reproving authors for hideous howlers passed into legend. He covered a wide range of history and biography, phases of art and taste, as well as reconsidering novelists of the past and, of course, genealogical works. His fortnightly arrangement as lead reviewer continued happily until 1990 when he and his collection of reviews, Miscellaneous Verdicts, were vituperatively trampled upon in The Sunday Telegraph by Auberon Waugh. The upshot was that Powell resigned as a contributor to the Telegraph after more than 50 years. By way of making some amends, the paper's management subscribed to a specially commissioned bust by William Pye.

Powell began to review for the Spectator again, contributed to the London Magazine, edited by his friend Alan Ross, and kept in touch with the literary scene. Among the writers of a younger generation who became his friends were Roy Fuller, Kingsley Amis (whom he effectively "discovered" when he was on Punch), Robert Conquest and V S Naipaul. A member of the Travellers' Club for 70 years, Powell journeyed to America, India, the Far East and on cultural cruises where he could pursue his interest in ancient history. One of his post-Dance novels, The Fisher King (1986) described such a cruise with Arthurian overtones. The other fiction of his later period was O, How the Wheel Becomes It! (1983), a novella about the pangs of retrospective sexual jealousy. Then, on the eve of his 90th birthday, Powell produced a surprise, even a shock. Although known not to have previously kept a diary, he published three volumes of Journals, covering the decade from 1982 to 1992.

While many delighted in this late bottling of the Master's dry wit, measured irony and quirky anecdotes, some were taken aback by the tetchy tones of an octogenarian sage no longer prepared to pull his punches. Besides swipes at the stupidity of politicians, reviewers and sub-editors ("one notes again and again what amounts to censorship of any original idea in a piece"), Powell delivered body blows to such literary sacred cows as Virginia Woolf ("what a dreadful woman she was"), Greene ("absurdly overrated"), Laurie Lee ("utterly unreadable") and the "woolly-minded" Auden Gang. Previously Powell had rigorously eschewed public political gestures - which he did not consider the stock-in-trade of a writer - but he had always been a staunch opponent of the Left and of totalitarianism. He attended the occasional writers' conference, as in Bulgaria where C P Snow told him that his fellow delegates argued as to whether Powell "looked like a professor or a soldier". It is a question which has exercised many observers. Ferdinand Mount likened Powell's appearance to the publisher he once was.

Others, expecting a tall, aloof presence were surprised to come across a toothy, chatty man of average height - though far from deserving of Philip Larkin's semi-affectionate nickname "Horse-Faced Dwarf", or "HFD". His sibilant Etonian drawl retained a hint of what his housemaster had described as "a way of speaking which may give offence to some because it seems to imply a cold superiority". But he perceptively added: "It may of course be simply due to shyness." Powell was, in short, an enigma. His volumes of memoirs - while containing an incisive collection of pen-portraits of his contemporaries - told the reader as little about the man himself as his 12-volume novel sequence disclosed about its narrator. But to his close friends and admirers he revealed a potent charm, sympathy and concern, above all a humorous curiosity, that was peculiarly his own.

"Melancholy," Powell thought, "should be taken for granted in any writer with a true gift for comedy." He was prone to accidie and occasionally to sloth - the deadly sin acted out by Jenkins in front of Sir Magnus Donners' tapestries, one of which depicted "a goat of unreliable aspect". Powell's own features were portrayed by various artists including Augustus John, Rodrigo Moynihan (for his 80th birthday) and most recently by Henry Mee - to whose "British Eminencies" exhibition Powell contributed some pithy captions. Of himself he wrote: "Powell undoubtedly looks a shade battered, perhaps even the recent subject of physical assault. If so, he seems to have taken it philosophically. He wears an oldish suit, red shirt, check tie, suitable clothes for more presentable occasions in the country. He holds some blue object, possibly a large book, possibly an equally large pocket handkerchief. The painter has caught something of the ironies and paradoxes of a writer's life." Powell served as a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery from 1962 to 1976.

Among the literary awards he won was the T S Eliot Prize for Creative Literature, the citation of which from the Ingersoll Foundation mentioned his contribution to upholding Judaeo-Christian standards and the Ten Commandments. It was a signal honour for one whom Evelyn Waugh once accurately suspected of agnosticism. Powell was, in his own words, "basically non-croyant", though, as A Dance to the Music of Time shows, he took keen interest in spiritualism and metaphysics. Powell's recreations included bottling wine imported in hogsheads from France, and covering every inch of the gentlemen's lavatory in the basement of his Regency country-house in Somerset with a collage of faces cut from magazines. He was appointed CBE in 1956 and CH in 1988. He married, in 1934, Lady Violet Pakenham, third daughter of the 5th Earl of Longford.

The occasion was marked by the publication of Powell's satirical poem, Caledonia, a swipe at the "Scotch" (the form he preferred) in the 18th-century manner, which was bound in tartan and printed by a man "somewhat given to the bottle" - hence the numerous misprints. Besides her own books, Lady Violet edited An Album to Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time (1987). She survives him, together with their two sons. A Dance to the Music of Time: vol.1: Spring: Amazon.co.uk: Anthony Powell: 9780099436683: Books By Marius Gabriel TOP 500 REVIEWER on 1 Feb. 2015 Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase Anthony Powell's masterpiece centres around a handful of upper-middle-class characters, who make their way from schooldays to old age, passing through the Second World War and concluding in the 1970s. However, there are hundreds of incidental, lesser characters who weave their way in and out of the novels, carrying along the story of an entire generation.

The key character of the novel -- and the most interesting -- is Kenneth Widmerpool, who enters the novel as an oddity -- a lower-class boy at an upper-class school, not quite right in anything he does, mocked by other boys, and yet a puzzle to them. Over the course of the novels, we trace Widmerpool's rising fortunes, and see how his oddness, his accomplished fawning, his determination, his willingness to face any humiliation and survive any snub, take him to the very top of British society. Widmerpool is one of the greatest creations of modern fiction. Every other character in the novel is in some way seen in relation to Widmerpool, and helps in some way to shed light on the rise of a new force in British political life, the Labour Party. And as Widmerpool's fortunes rise, so the old ruling class, the landed gentry and the Old School, are shown in decline. New money replaces old, the status quo crumbles silently into dust. A common criticisms of this series is that it is wordy. Powell is a writer who loves to expand on the minutiae of life, producing a flow of words which at times overwhelms the reader.

Moreover, the books are repetitive, consisting largely of endless conversations between characters which don't always go anywhere, and merge into one another; but this is a group of novels to be read at leisure, rather than to be raced through. Take them along on a slow boat to China. I recommend the novels very highly to anyone who loves to read well-written English, and who has the patience for the long haul. Anthony Powell Society - Anthony Powell Society Anthony Powell Society Tel: +44 (0)20 8864 4095 31/10/2016: Tote Bags added to online shop . Trustees & Officers page updated. 09/09/2016: Autumn Newsletter now available to members; view contents on AP News weblog Our Aim To increase widespread interest in the works of Anthony Powell in a way which balances the needs of all enthusiasts, including academics and professional literarists. The Anthony Powell Society is a charitable literary society devoted to the author Anthony Powell, 1905-2000. It was founded in June 2000 and awarded charitable status in April 2003.

The Society is governed by its Constitution which states the formal charitable aim as: To advance for the public benefit, education and interest in the life and works of the English author Anthony Dymoke Powell. The Quotable Powell But if the consolation for life is art, what may the artist expect from life? An incident mentioned quite casually in Vasari's Lives of the Most Excellent Italian Architects, Painters and Sculptors always seems to me worth recalling. It teaches several lessons: that if you want something done get the best executant available to do it; that minor jobs are often worth taking on; that duration in time should not necessarily be the criterion in producing a work of art. Vasari says that on a winter day in Florence, when snow was deep on the ground, one of the Medici sent for Michaelangelo to build a snowman in the courtyard of the Medici palace. Notwithstanding those (like Constant Lambert) who dislike the High Renaissance one can scarcely doubt that the finest snowman on record took shape. --- --- --- Anthony Powell, The Strangers All Are Gone --- --- --- Contributed by Pictures in Powell Anthony Powell, Author The English author Anthony Dymoke Powell was born in London on 21 December 1905.

He was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford where he met several other young writers and artists including Evelyn Waugh, Henry Green, John Betjeman, Graham Greene and Osbert Lancaster. Prior to World War II he worked in publishing and as a film-script writer, before becoming a full-time novelist and literary critic. Powell is probably best known for his twelve-volume novel sequence A Dance to the Music of Time (usually just referred to as Dance). He wrote a further seven other novels, a biography of the seventeenth-century diarist John Aubrey and two plays. Powell (pronounced Po-ell, by the way) was also a prolific literary critic and book reviewer for a number of periodicals including the Daily Telegraph, the Times Literary Supplement, Punch and the Spectator. He published four volumes of memoirs, three volumes of diaries and three volumes (one posthumously) of his selected literary criticism. On top of all his writing, Powell was an accomplished genealogist, publishing almost 40 papers on Welsh genealogy, and was in later years a Vice-President of the Society of Genealogists.

He was made a CBE in 1956 and a Companion of Honour in 1988. Powell was married (in 1934) to the author Lady Violet Pakenham; they had two sons. He died peacefully on 28 March 2000 at his Somerset home. Dance To The Music Of Time Volume 2 by Anthony Powell Share this title Volume 2 contains novels four, five and six of the Dance To The Music Of Time sequence. 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. This volume contains novels four, five and six of the sequence, Cornerstone Digital mm x mm x mm g "A Dance to the Music of Time" Reviews & Ratings - IMDb IMDb trailers and videos full cast and crew trivia official sites memorable quotes Overview 22 out of 23 people found the following review useful: Abridgement not adaptation; a lost opportunity from Helsinki, Finland 1 November 2004 This was an adaptation that was almost bound to fail.

Squeezing 12 novels into eight hours of television allows just 40 minutes per novel. 'The Valley of Bones' was condensed into just 17 minutes. If this had been done well it would truly have been a miracle of compression. However, it was achieved by eliminating about two-thirds of the book. So it is really rather surprising that the adaptors should have created scenes which were only hinted at rather than described in the book. I counted four, all of which added unnecessary violence and gore. I think if Powell had wanted to make these scenes explicit he would have done so - but he preferred for them to happen offstage. What is also hard to forgive was the decision to play fast and loose with the chronology towards the end of the series. For example, the launch of 'Fission' should have been immediately after the end of the war rather than somewhere in the mid 50s, while the award of the Magnus Donners prize took place in 1968 or 9 rather than 1963. Anyone who has any feel at all for the period would know that the difference is immense. But there are good things about this too.

The casting is excellent with no-one out of place; the atmosphere for the most part convincing and compelling. A pity that the cast did not have the chance to work through a real adaptation, rather than this drastic and unsatisfactory abridgement. Was the above review useful to you? 22 out of 25 people found the following review useful: majestic mini-series from United Kingdom 23 June 2004 This television adaptation, by Hugh Whitmore, of Anthony Powell's twelve-volume book condenses all the action of five decades, and over a hundred characters, into eight hours. We first meet the main characters  Nick Jenkins, our constant narrator; Kenneth Widmerpool; Charles Stringham; and Peter Templar  when they are at school together. Through the years we watch them move through their tangled lives, which end in tragedy for some, happiness for others.

Making an impact within the cast are James Purefoy as Nick Jenkins (playing him from university to the end of World War II); Jonathan Cake as Peter Templar; Claire Skinner as Jean Duport; Grant Thatcher as Mark Members; James Fleet as Hugh Moreland; Zoë Wanamaker as Audrey MacLintock; John Gielgud as St John Clarke; Miranda Richardson as Pamela Fritton; David Yelland as Jenkins' father; Edward Fox as Uncle Giles; and Michael Williams as Ted Jeavons. But  the best performance within this series by a mile is from the wonderful Simon Russell-Beale, managing to turn the truly horrible Widmerpool into a rounded character who is totally convincing, whether as a figure of fun at school, as a pompous major in the war, as a humiliated husband, or as a free spirit dancing. One little quibble would be  why did they suddenly change the casting for Nick Jenkins and no other main character in the final episode? J C Quiggin, Odo Stephens, Mark Members, Widmerpool and others remain the same actors made up to look older. Jean and Isabel (Mrs Jenkins) are also recast but this isn't as noticeable.

So, after two and a half episodes getting used to James Purefoy as Nick we suddenly have to adapt to John Standing. He's effective, but I think this change was a mistake. So, is this adaptation any good? It is true that sometimes you lose track of who's who (who they were related to, who they married, where they met) but there are numerous scenes of interest  not all directly witnessed by Nick. The musical soundtrack is superb and well-chosen. Having eight hours to tell the story means that things don't have to progress at a breakneck pace, and if some aspects come off better than others, nothing really fails. Dance to the Music of Time' is an engrossing and superior piece of TV drama. Was the above review useful to you? 17 out of 18 people found the following review useful: Memmorable adaptation with just a few flaws from Bristol, UK 17 May 2006 They don't make adaptations like this any more - no doubt for cost reasons and a lack of imagination and bravery at the TV companies. 7 hours of solid drama, yet full of incidental humour and some very fine characterisations.

Unfortunately it is flawed, and the flaws make it just very good viewing rather than the excellent series it should have been. The biggest flaws to my mind are: 1 The decision to replace Nick and his wife by new actors for Film 4 was totally wrong. Nick ages far too much in too short a space of time, and looks completely different. This creates a real problem of believability. 2 Still on ageing, some of the actors are 'aged' very well, whilst others (especially the ladies and Odo) seem hardly any different as the decades progress. 3 Film 4 is by far the weakest, though to be fair this reflects the books on which it is based. Perhaps it should have been cut further and the earlier years given even greater prominence. 4 Despite a great deal of pruning, there are still too many characters and insufficient narration for non-aficionados of the books to be sure all the time of who is who. 5 The scenes often seem to be a succession of dramatic deaths - difficult to avoid with the way the story has to be condensed, but very predictable nonetheless. However, it's still pretty good, and light years removed from much of the dumbed-down drama on TV today. Was the above review useful to you?

13 out of 14 people found the following review useful: Execution almost perfect, subject matter a question.... Author: tonstant viewer 19 April 2008 No, I haven't read the books, but I have read Proust, and you can bet Mr. Powell read him too. Powell's first volume appeared thirty years after Proust's death, and a greater valentine can't be imagined. Both "Dance" and "In Search of Lost Time" are panoramic multi-generational quasi-autobiographical narratives of the gentry they knew. Lower class types pop in from time to time, but they never take center stage for long. Both genteel epics run more than 3000 pages. Major characters are rarely single portraits, but are usually drawn from composites of two or three prototypes. Both works chronicle the human cycles of birth, education, coupling, re-coupling, decay and death. In addition to writing earlier, Proust had the structural advantage of writing the beginning and end of his novel first, spending the rest of his life filling in the middle.

It was a meditation on the nature of memory, and underlying all the gossip and melodrama is an awareness that there is a coherent thesis and philosophy tying the whole journey together. At least as presented here, no such unifying ideas are discernible in Powell. We meet characters of greater or lesser interest, they do the things that people do (and sometimes don't do, and occasionally never have done in the history of the world). They learn, age, crack-up and die, but the whole thing just kind of trails off and rumbles to a stop rather than ends. We may have a good time getting there, but I wind up wondering why we made the trip. In response to criticisms of the abridgment, we should note that Powell, as a former screenwriter, was not upset at the reshaping of his work for TV. Nicholas Coleridge reports: "Powell, himself, says that 'Somewhat to my surprise' he is happy with the adaptation. 'It seems quite alright to me,' he told me with faltering voice, on the telephone. 'I think they've done it as well as this medium possibly can.'" Across the board, the actors are almost uniformly pleasing.

Simon Russell Beale has been rightly cheered for his remarkable and daring Widmerpool, but Michael Williams (Judi Dench's late husband) is outstanding as Ted Jeavons, and Edward Fox steals every scene he's in, no surprise there. James Purefoy as Nick has to do a lot of listening, and occasionally he does it wonderfully well. I was not upset at the recasting of half a dozen characters in the fourth film. Some of the young actors looked quite silly in extreme age makeup as practiced 10 years ago. I'd have been happier if it had been more widespread. It took me about 8 seconds to register that Nick and Isabel and Jean were played by different actors, and then I plunged right back into the story. I'm sorry for the viewers that were derailed by the substitutions, but I wasn't. I am perplexed by the character of Pamela Flitton as played here in her unique patented performance by Miranda Richardson. She is a vicious, irritable, impatient, destructive, sexually voracious, uncontrolled and uncontrollable woman, everything that panics an English writer from Charles Dickens to Bram Stoker and onward.

Pamela is a crimson-lipped vampire straight out of Hammer Horror, and not one thing she does or says has a motivation. I hope the books are more coherent in explaining why, why anything. BTW, the film "A Business Affair," from novels by Barbara Skelton, gives Pamela's prototype's side of the story, and I look forward to seeing it by way of further illumination. There's precious little to comprehend on view here. She just is. Anyway, this is all professionally done and makes for entertaining viewing. It may not be the absolute best of its genre, but it's a long way from the worst. It is highly recommended to people who like British miniseries based on long novels. OTOH, no one has ever made a good movie out of Proust, they're all terrible. There's a wonderful published screenplay Harold Pinter wrote for Joseph Losey, but it was never produced. If you want to spend a year reading 3000 pages, please start first with Proust, then take on Powell for dessert. Was the above review useful to you?

11 out of 12 people found the following review useful: Excellent Films from UK TV from London, England 19 July 2001 At long last, Anthony Powell's 12 volume novel sequence A Dance to the Music of Time has been dramatised for television. If Powell's "Journals" are to be believed, this is after any number of false starts spanning the best part of 20 years. The dramatisation was in four two-hour episodes, each covering approximately 3 books. They were shown on UK's Channel 4 TV in October 1997. The format of four 2-hour films was, in many ways, unfortunate as it severely constrained the amount of the action which could be shown, however given the exigencies of modern TV scheduling it was probably the only way in which "Dance" was ever going to get televised. As a devotee of the books, I was apprehensive about how they would translate into film. Just how do you condense 12 novels into 8 hours of television? However in my view the dramatisation worked extremely well, notwithstanding the necessary omissions.

What helped the whole production was some interesting, and at times inspired and doubtless extravagant, casting which included: Edward Fox (as Uncle Giles), Zoë Wanamaker (as Audrey Maclintick), John Gielgud (as St John Clarke), Alan Bennett (as Sillery), Miranda Richardson (as Pamela Flitton)... some interesting choices!! Overall an interesting and enjoyable series. I just fear that having been done once that we'll never see "Dance" recreated in a different (better?) format and that Powell will remain relatively unknown in comparison with contemporaries like Evelyn Waugh ... which is in my view quite unjustifiable as Powell is a much better writer. Fortunately Channel 4 released these 4 films on video - which is excellent as they're well worth watching again. Was the above review useful to you? 13 out of 17 people found the following review useful: Dance to the Music of Time an absolute ball! from America 15 June 2001 Hands down, this is the best miniseries or film that I have ever seen. Everything about this miniseries was my cup of tea: the clothes, the scenery, the dialogue, the many handsome actors, just everything.

I had broken down and bought myself one of those PAL video players as so many video tapes that I wanted to see were only available in PAL format. As an American NTSC videotape user, it was hard for me to reconcile the purchase of the special PAL VCR, until I saw this miniseries in all its glory. What an absolute confection! I wanted to be a part of the story. I find it hard to believe that this miniseries is not available to the American market in NTSC format. This miniseries far surpasses Brideshead Revisited, among others. Although Simon Russell Beal certainly did a phenomenal acting job, I also thought James Purefoy displayed alot of range and depth particularly in the difficult role of an observer narrator. I really can't say enough about how marvelous this miniseries was! It was worth every penny spent to see this miniseries! Was the above review useful to you?

8 out of 9 people found the following review useful: A well-mounted compromise *** This review may contain spoilers *** Caution: spoilers Cramming Anthony Powell's magnum opus, the longest novel in the English language (over 3000 pages published in 12 parts over 20 years and at least 400 characters), into 8 hours of television is an awesome task which defeated several would-be adapters including Dennis Potter, but Hugh Whitemore has managed it here, although of course a lot has been left out. The obsessive Captain Gwatkin and the likable rogue Dicky Umfraville do not make an appearance, though minor characters like Robert Tolland whose only claim to fame is his involvement with an older woman appears in full. It can't have been easy deciding what to leave out, but rightly, I think, the blue pencil fell more heavily on the weaker later parts. Powell was a lot better at depicting the 20s, 30s and 40s that he was the 50s, 60s and 70s, after he had moved from London to Devon.

Maybe Hilaire Belloc was correct, at least for urban writers, when he said that the country 'was a kind of healthy death.' The effect of the necessary editing (the dialogue is usually straight from the novel) is to put that great character of English fiction, Kenneth Widmerpool, firmly in centre stage (though his gruesome mother has been dispensed with). Widmerpool is portrayed over the 50 year time span by the same actor, Simon Russell Beale, in a stunningly consistent characterisation. He is a monster, but there is something very ordinary about him, a kid who was never accepted for what he was and who became a power-hungry bureaucrat as a means of imposing his will on those who would not accept him. The final crack-up is a tad fanciful, but it fits, for at last Kenneth can be his obsequious self while at the same time reject the hierarchy he has spent the previous 50 years trying to climb (the best he does is a peerage and a University Chancellorship, which would have to be regarded as consolation prizes).

Widmerpool was obviously inspired by some real-life acquaintances of Powell's, but he is a true fictional creation far more vivid and horrible than if he was merely the subject of a disguised biography. One of the mysteries of the novel is why Nicholas Jenkins, the self-effacing narrator, spends so much time on Widmerpool, who is patently not Nicholas's kind of guy. In fact Nicholas, who mostly hob-nobs with fellow-writers and artists such as Moreland the composer, probably shares Bob Duport's opinion uttered from his wheelchair near the end that Widmerpool was 'a château-bottled sh*t'. Perhaps it's just that Widmerpool has been adopted as the centre of the Dance and we should remember there are many other interesting stories going on around the centre. Pamela Flitton, la belle dame sans merci, is splendidly realised by Miranda Richardson (despite being too old for the part) and this tends to strengthen the focus on Widmerpool, given her stormy relationship with him and her unparalleled ability to create scenes on genteel social occasions.

Having to cast two or three actors in the same part (four in the case of Jenkins) is always a problem, and the gap between Jenkins Mark III (James Purefoy) and Jenkins Mark IV (John Standing) is, alas, obvious. Some actors, with the aid of excellent make-up, age beautifully, like Adrian Scarborough as J G Quiggan and Alan Bennett as Sillery, others, such as the beautiful Mona (Annabel Mullion) scarcely age at all. 'Dance' is stuffed full of wonderful minor characters  Uncle Giles, Mrs Erdleigh, McLintock and his wife, Lady Mollie, Ted Jeavons, Erridge, Magnus Donners, Matilda Donners, Deacon the painter, St John Clarke, Mark Members, to name about a dozen of them. Most of the performances are fine, though maybe John Gielgud (at 95) was a bit ancient for a novelist in his 60s. I hope viewers of this production won't be put off reading the book (which is still obtainable in a four volume set).

I don't know whether it is still obtainable but there is also an excellent 'Handbook' to the Dance and its characters by Hilary Spurling, published by Heinemann in 1977. Anthony Powell, who died aged 94 in 2000, was keen to have 'Dance' televised (on his terms) and spent years trying to get it on air. His contemporary Evelyn Waugh hated the idea of his novels being televised, or for that matter being made into films. Ironically, "Dance" on TV, while generally good viewing is very much a compromise and 'Brideshead Revisited' remains the TV adaptation which produced a work of art comparable with the novel itself. Was the above review useful to you? 14 out of 22 people found the following review useful: It's no Brideshead from Australia 23 August 2003 I have to disagree with Mary Smith from America who said that this series was better than Brideshead Revisited. A Dance to the Music of time is almost completely devoid of any charismatic or otherwise engaging characters, with the exception of the likeable Stringham and the repulsive Widmerpool.

It gestures towards Brideshead far too obviously (perhaps this was inevitable given the subject matter and the era) and in a way that only demonstrates its relative inferiority. The dialogue and direction are far too stagey, with the result that the character's words just don't ring true. Moreover I felt no concern for any of the characters: they wander aimlessly through their lives and we are offered nothing more than disconnected snapshots to develop our interest. There seems to be no analysis of or motivation for any of their actions: one character kisses another, some people get married, some divorce and some die. There is little by way of analysis: we "see" a lot, but understand (or care for) little of what goes on. I confess that I enjoyed this series in parts. The costumes really are very good and the better actors do try valiantly with this stilted and sterile script. But it really is almost embarrassing compared to the infinitely superior Brideshead. Apart from a few entertaining scenes involving people dying at parties, and a rather enthusiastic display of nudity in the early scenes, this mini-series is really only for those who have read the books, and even then only as a curiosity piece.

Perhaps I have come to expect too much of British mini-series after being spoilt by productions such as Brideshead Revisited, Martin Chuzzlewit and Pride and Prejudice. Nonetheless, A Dance to the Music of Time is a barely entertaining, wasted opportunity. Was the above review useful to you? 5 out of 5 people found the following review useful: A slipshod waste of talent 20 August 2009 *** This review may contain spoilers *** I spent the month of July reading Anthony Powell's 'A Dance to the Music of Time'; books that are uneven in quality but afford a long, fascinating read resulting in a strange poignance akin to but also quite different from Evelyn Waugh's war trilogy 'Sword of Honor'. Powell also seemed determined to out-Proust Proust but fails in that regard as Proust was a much better writer. Some have thought this to be Powell's version of Waugh's 'Brideshead Revisited'. I can see no correlation at all beyond, perhaps, the early scenes at Oxford and the drunken character of Charles Stringham who is vaguely reminiscent of Sebastian Flyte in Waugh's famous book.

I have reached a point where I am no longer simply grateful for someone taking a stab at filming great or near-great literature. This adaptation of Powell's massive epic is so poorly done that I can find no mitigation for it having been attempted at all. I didn't expect much, even from a longish mini-series, but these books deserved detailed treatment, however many episodes it might have entailed. But the producer, Alvin Rakoff, either didn't have a clue as to the spirit of this story or was sorely curtailed in his budget. Given the often inept casting (something for which the producer is responsible) and the slipshod editing and hacking about of both the story line and the excision of many characters, I suspect the former case to be true. Mr Rakoff managed to miss the heart and soul of this tale and has merely created an interminable bore of a film. And the switch of actors in several roles was not only unnecessary but clumsily done. On the other hand, given the horrible make-up jobs on the characters of Mark Members and J.G.

Quiggin who both look 100 years old when they are only in their 60s it is probably good that there weren't more characters to have to age in such a way. There are two performances that are absolutely true to the originals and they are Simon Russell Beale ('Persuasion') and Miranda Richardson who play Lord and Lady Widmerpool. There is no explanation for Pamela Flitton Widmerpool's behavior in the books and she is just as much an enigma in the film. It is terrible that Beale's amazing performance has been wasted on such a lousy screenplay. Most of the acting is very good, such as it is, but several performers are badly miscast. Paul Rhys is especially annoying as Charles Stringham, a man who is depressive but not a lobotomized, grinning buffoon. And poor Lord Erridge Warminster is turned into a goofy clown. Rakoff has added little political bits of his own for some reason; for instance, it was deemed necessary to include an attack on the Marxists in the demonstration by Oswald Mosley's Black Shirts. This is not in the book and adds nothing to the story.

There are many other instances of wasted celluloid that would have been better utilized in telling the original story and creating rounded characters. Only Widmerpool and Pamela Flitton are rounded out, the rest are all cardboard cut-outs whose behavior makes little sense as a result. The producers also play fast and loose with time sequences. And characters run on for a scene or two and then vanish never to be seen again. This was even confusing to someone who knows the books! I doubt if I will live long enough to ever see this gargantuan tale presented as it should be so I'll have to stick to the books, which are fascinating. I have given this effort 3 stars, one for Beale, one for Richardson and one for production values which are high. No expense was spared on hiring out vintage automobiles and beautiful houses, not to mention a nice junket to Venice for the production team. Skip this piece of rubbish and try and find the books, if you can. Little Brown published them in a four book omnibus which can still be found from time to time on ABE.com. or if you are lucky and live in a large city, in a good used bookstore with a rare books section.

This was a MAJOR disappointment even when I was prepared for a watered down version. I didn't think it could possibly be this bad. Reader's Digest would have been proud but the BBC should hang it's head in shame. Was the above review useful to you? 5 out of 6 people found the following review useful: Disappointing and often annoying from San Francisco 16 June 2012 I should preface my remarks by saying that I've not read the source material (Anthony Powell's twelve semi-autobiographical novels) so I can't comment on that aspect of the story. My frustration with the protagonist Nick Jenkins passivity no doubt reflects Powell's original creation. I thought that James Purefoy did a credible job portraying Jenkins and it was a relief to see him take a break from the usual scenery chewing, sneering and smirking he so often exhibits in his period film performances. To the contrary -- he's understated and passive to the point of bewilderment which, I presume, was Powell's intention. Much of the rest of the cast is excellent (and any frequent viewer of British period films will recognize many fine character actors), although the characters themselves are often inexplicably unappealing.

Throughout it all, Jenkins stays collegial, if not congenial, with every one of them, no matter how despicable they might be. That struck me as unbelievable, but again -- I suspect that Powell was using Jenkins as a personification of the British trait of "getting on with people". Fair enough. What, then, is my objection to "A Dance to the Music of Time"? They are three, two of which have to do with the structure of the story. First, the adaptation feels forced and is hugely uneven. You always know things are going badly in a film when characters employ declamation to introduce themselves. "Why hello, young Winston Churchill! You may not remember me, but I'm the Prince of Wales." (I just made that up for effect, but it reflects the tin-eared dialogue often employed in the miniseries when it needs to Tell Us Something.) Yes, it's madness to try to abridge 12 novels down to seven hours on film, but that decision largely doomed the miniseries' credibility. Second, the further along the film goes, the less focus it has. It wanders off into one utterly pointless subplot after another, trying to express the passage of time and zeitgeists along the way.

No sale. It feels forced and perfunctory. Finally, due to the timeframe of the film (1920s through '60s), characters must age. And yet, for some inexplicable reason, James Purefoy is one of the very few who is replaced with a different (and older) actor, and one who looks nothing like him. This requires more awkward exposition ("Hello, Bill. You may not remember me, but I'm Nicholas Jenkins, even though I look nothing like the Nick Jenkins you knew in Episode Three.") Why was this done? Widmerpool and most of the other actors progressively age (to varying degrees of believability), but just swapping out the protagonist for a different actor torpedoes the film's credibility all the more. Inexplicably, Miranda Richardson not only portrays the same character throughout, she does not age one year. Absurd. Ultimately, this film left me scratching and shaking my head. Perhaps the books bring something more to the story, but the film felt like a contrived string of events both banal and pseudo-historic, with a hollow man at the center. We never care about any of the characters, nor do we see anything of substance inside of the protagonist.

He's a cypher, an "everyman" and ultimately a bore to follow for seven hours. Was the above review useful to you? Page 1 of 2:

Question: Who wrote the 12 volume novel sequence "A Dance to the Music of Time”?
Answer: Anthony Powell