A Dance to the Music of Time

The sequence is narrated by Nicholas Jenkins. At the beginning of the first volume, Jenkins falls into a reverie while watching snow descending on a coal brazier. This reminds him of "the ancient world—legionaries ... mountain altars ... centaurs ..." These classical projections introduce the account of his schooldays, which opens A Question of Upbringing. Over the course of the following volumes, he recalls the people he met over the previous half a century and the events, often small, that reveal their characters. Jenkins's personality is unfolded slowly, and often elliptically, over the course of the novels.

Time magazine included the novel in its list of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005. The editors of Modern Library ranked the work as 43rd-greatest English-language novel of the 20th century. The BBC ranked the novel 36th on its list of the 100 greatest British novels. In 2019 Christopher de Bellaigue wrote in The Nation that A Dance to the Music of Time is "perhaps the supreme London novel of the 20th century, an examination of the human behavior that defines the upper echelons of this brash, resilient, often pitiless place."

Inspiration

Jenkins reflects on the Poussin painting in the first two pages of A Question of Upbringing:

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 recognisable 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.

Poussin's painting is housed at the Wallace Collection in London.

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Analysis

Its 12 novels have been acclaimed by such critics as A. N. Wilson and fellow writers including Evelyn Waugh and Kingsley Amis as among the finest English fiction of the 20th century. Auberon Waugh dissented, calling it "tedious and overpraised—particularly by literary hangers-on". The work was more heavily criticised towards the late 1960s, seen as being old-fashioned. Long-time friend V. S. Naipaul cast similar doubts regarding the work, if not the Powell oeuvre. Naipaul described his sentiments after a long-delayed review of Powell's work following the author's death this way: "it may be that our friendship lasted all this time because I had not examined his work".

While the work is often compared to Marcel Proust, others find the comparison "obvious, although superficial", with its narrator's voice more like the participant-observer of The Great Gatsby than that of Proust's self-reflective narrator. Two essays by Perry Anderson demonstrate significant differences between the two writers. The comparative analysis, A Dance to Lost Time: Marcel Proust's 'In Search of Lost Time' compared with Anthony Powell's 'A Dance to the Music of Time' by Patrick Alexander explores the reception of the two.

Powell's official biographer, Hilary Spurling, has published Invitation to the Dance – a Handbook to Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time. This annotates, in dictionary form, the characters, events, art, music, and other references. She has also calculated the timeline employed by the author: this is used in the synopses linked from the novels below.

Bernard Stacey compiled a catalog and analysis of the poetic allusions in the novel. The various aspects of the novel-sequence are also analysed in An Index to 'A Dance to the Music of Time' by B. J. Moule, D. McLeod, and Robert L. Selig. Volumes 7-9 (The Valley of Bones, The Soldier's Art and The Military Philosophers), collectively known as The War Trilogy, are the focus of Bernard Stacey's War Dance.

In 2025, fifty years after Hearing Secret Harmonies was published, Alec Marsh wrote in The Spectator that it was a testament to a lost era.

The novels

Published dates are those of the first UK publication. The narrative is rarely specific about the years in which events take place. Those below are suggested by Hilary Spurling in Invitation to the Dance – a Handbook to Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time. Dust jackets of the first editions were designed by James Broom-Lynne.

Principal characters

Adaptations

The cycle was adapted by Frederick Bradnum as a Classic Serial on BBC Radio 4. In order to fit the material in, it was broadcast as four separate serials each based on a set of three books: the first three serials had six episodes, the last eight. The series were broadcast between 1979 and 1982. The cycle was adapted again as a six-part Classic Serial on BBC Radio 4 from 6 April to 11 May 2008, dramatized by Michael Butt and directed by John Taylor. The cycle was adapted as a four-part TV series A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell and Hugh Whitemore for Channel 4 in 1997, directed by Christopher Morahan and Alvin Rakoff.