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Anthony Powell: Dancing to the Music of Time
16 Hours and 47 Minutes
The definitive portrait of a literary master from one of our generation's foremost biographers
Acclaimed literary biographer Hilary Spurling turns her attention to Anthony Powell, an iconic figure of English letters. Equally notorious for his literary achievements and his lacerating wit, Powell famously authored the twelve-volume, twenty-five year magnum opus, A Dance to the Music of Time. This enduringly fascinating portrait of mid-20th-century Britain has never been out of print, inspiring TV and radio adaptations and elevating the author to The Times' list of fifty greatest British writers since 1945.
Master novelist, well-connected socialite and keen-eyed social observer, Powell comes into focus as never before in this authoritative biography from one of our generation's greatest biographers.
The definitive portrait of a literary master from one of our generation's foremost biographers
Acclaimed literary biographer Hilary Spurling turns her attention to Anthony Powell, an iconic figure of English letters. Equally notorious for his literary achievements and his lacerating wit, Powell famously authored the twelve-volume, twenty-five year magnum opus, A Dance to the Music of Time. This enduringly fascinating portrait of mid-20th-century Britain has never been out of print, inspiring TV and radio adaptations and elevating the author to The Times' list of fifty greatest British writers since 1945.
Master novelist, well-connected socialite and keen-eyed social observer, Powell comes into focus as never before in this authoritative biography from one of our generation's greatest biographers.
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First published October 5, 2017
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About the author
Hilary Spurling
28 books49 followersHilary Spurling, CBE, FRSL (born 1940) is an English writer, known as a journalist and biographer. She won the Whitbread Prize for the second volume of her biography of Henri Matisse in January 2006. Burying The Bones: Pearl Buck in China was published in March 2010.
She is married to playwright John Spurling, and has three children (Amy, Nathaniel and Gilbert) and two grandchildren.
She is married to playwright John Spurling, and has three children (Amy, Nathaniel and Gilbert) and two grandchildren.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 41 reviews
March 24, 2020
Hilary Spurling knew Anthony Powell over many years and agreed with him that she would publish a posthumous biography. Anthony Powell: Dancing to the Music of Time is the result. It's a page turner, from Powell's troubled family background to a triumphant conclusion at which Powell was established as one of the great 20th-century novelists.
Anthony Powell's contact list was a thing of wonder and awe, he seemed to have the happy knack of getting on well with a wide range of fascinating people. His list of friends is a who's who (in the UK) of the Twentieth Century. With his wife Violet, he was also a prodigious host and entertainer and enjoyed close relationships with many key figures.
I read all twelve A Dance to the Music of Time novels between May 2014 and July 2014. The twelve-volume sequence A Dance to the Music of Time traces a colourful group of English acquaintances from 1914 to 1971. The slowly developing narrative centres around life's poignant encounters between friends and lovers who later drift apart and yet keep reencountering each other over numerous unfolding decades as they move through the vicissitudes of marriage, work, aging, and ultimately death.
Part of the pleasure of Anthony Powell: Dancing to the Music of Time is discovering how Anthony Powell wrote A Dance to the Music of Time, who he collaborated with, which autobiographical details he included, who he based some of the characters on, and so forth.
If you’ve read A Dance to the Music of Time you’ll devour this splendid biography however it's impossible to read without experiencing a strong desire to revisit it. If you haven't yet read them, it's hard to imagine you would be able to resist the urge to read all twelve of the A Dance to the Music of Time books at your earliest available opportunity.
The twelve A Dance to the Music of Time books are available individually, or as four seasonally themed compendium volumes:
Spring
A Question of Upbringing – (1951)
A Buyer's Market – (1952)
The Acceptance World – (1955)
Summer
At Lady Molly's – (1957)
Casanova's Chinese Restaurant – (1960)
The Kindly Ones – (1962)
Autumn
The Valley of Bones – (1964)
The Soldier's Art – (1966)
The Military Philosophers – (1968)
Winter
Books Do Furnish a Room – (1971)
Temporary Kings – (1973)
Hearing Secret Harmonies – (1975)
(dates are first UK publication dates)
4/5
Anthony Powell's contact list was a thing of wonder and awe, he seemed to have the happy knack of getting on well with a wide range of fascinating people. His list of friends is a who's who (in the UK) of the Twentieth Century. With his wife Violet, he was also a prodigious host and entertainer and enjoyed close relationships with many key figures.
I read all twelve A Dance to the Music of Time novels between May 2014 and July 2014. The twelve-volume sequence A Dance to the Music of Time traces a colourful group of English acquaintances from 1914 to 1971. The slowly developing narrative centres around life's poignant encounters between friends and lovers who later drift apart and yet keep reencountering each other over numerous unfolding decades as they move through the vicissitudes of marriage, work, aging, and ultimately death.
Part of the pleasure of Anthony Powell: Dancing to the Music of Time is discovering how Anthony Powell wrote A Dance to the Music of Time, who he collaborated with, which autobiographical details he included, who he based some of the characters on, and so forth.
If you’ve read A Dance to the Music of Time you’ll devour this splendid biography however it's impossible to read without experiencing a strong desire to revisit it. If you haven't yet read them, it's hard to imagine you would be able to resist the urge to read all twelve of the A Dance to the Music of Time books at your earliest available opportunity.
The twelve A Dance to the Music of Time books are available individually, or as four seasonally themed compendium volumes:
Spring
A Question of Upbringing – (1951)
A Buyer's Market – (1952)
The Acceptance World – (1955)
Summer
At Lady Molly's – (1957)
Casanova's Chinese Restaurant – (1960)
The Kindly Ones – (1962)
Autumn
The Valley of Bones – (1964)
The Soldier's Art – (1966)
The Military Philosophers – (1968)
Winter
Books Do Furnish a Room – (1971)
Temporary Kings – (1973)
Hearing Secret Harmonies – (1975)
(dates are first UK publication dates)
4/5
November 12, 2020
Maybe 3.5. A really interesting biography – a little dry in places but I expect that's just my taste as I don't read that many biographies. It's well written and intriguing, and it was great to learn more about one of my favourite authors.
October 23, 2017
I have always been rather ambivalent towards biographies as I find the minutiae of people's lives rather dull reading, especially when we have to wade through the subject's childhood and 'all that David Copperfield kind of crap'; but certain people have generated enough interest in me to find out about their lives and quite a lot of those subjects have been authors. Typically those I have read biographies of have been authors that have led exciting or extraordinary lives, those I've read a large amount of their work and those whose work is autobiographical or semi-autobiographical. Part of the interest of reading biographies of those authors whose work is at least partially autobiographical is comparing the work with their real life and this was, in part, the interest for me in reading this recent biography of Anthony Powell by Hilary Spurling. Writers, such as Powell and Proust, as well as their biographers warn us that we shouldn't be looking for real life comparisons of characters in their books, but in the end it's just too tempting to resist, especially when many of the novelists' characters do have real-life counterparts and events are similar to those in the author's life; I then think we are justified in looking for them and as long as we're grown-up enough to realise that there isn't necessarily a one-to-one connection, that not all the characters are taken from real life and that some may be a mixture of different people or just inventions of the author then I don't see any harm in this pastime.
At first Anthony Powell's life doesn't seem to be a particularly interesting topic but as with his novel series, A Dance to the Music of Time, it is the characters that he comes in contact with as well as his reflections on them and himself that ends up making this an interesting book to read. Spurling doesn't attempt anything fancy, instead she cracks on from 1905, the year of Powell's birth, giving a brief description of Powell's mother and father and his childhood years before surging on. The opening sentences gives a picture of these early years.
His mother was very introverted, religious and had a liking for the occult, whereas his father was explosive and demanding and mostly absent from Anthony's early life, especially once WWI began as he was an officer in the army. Spurling then covers Powell's school years at New Beacon School in Sevenoaks, Kent followed by Eton, where he became friends with Henry Green, and then on to Balliol College, Oxford, where he befriended Evelyn Waugh.
Although the sections on Powell's schooldays and university period are of interest as we get to see the young Anthony Powell and we can compare it with Nick Jenkin's life in the first novel of 'Dance', the biography really became interesting for me after he left university and he began work at the publishers Gerald Duckworth and Co. in London. It's here where we start to see several interesting characters filtering through Powell's life. Duckworth's was a strange publishers for young Powell to end up at as the owner seems rather uninterested in publishing books and tries to block any attempts to revitalise the firm. But it is at Duckworth's that Powell begins to experience life more fully and on his own terms. During this period he has love affairs, meets artists, buys a car and starts writing his first novel, Afternoon Men. Spurling does an excellent job in portraying the rather seedy bohemian lifestyle that Powell was immersed in. His rather dilapidated lodgings in Shepherd Market appealed to him as a counterpoint to his life at Oxford. Reading the chapters on this period in Powell's life has really made me want to read more of his pre-WWII (and pre-'Dance') novels, especially What's Become of Waring?, which is set in a publishers much like Duckworth's.
During a visit to Pakenham Hall, Ireland, he met and fell in love with Violet Pakenham, whom he married in 1934. Powell left Duckworth's and tried, but failed, to make it in Hollywood as a scriptwriter. During the war he entered the army as a Second Lieutenant and, like Nick Jenkins, ended up in Intelligence. The post-war years were somewhat difficult for Powell, as they must have been for nearly everyone. Spurling describes Powell's moments of depression during this period, convinced that he'd wasted the most productive years of his life and that he'd never write again. During the war years his sole work had been a biography of John Aubrey but it is during this period that he came across Nicolas Poussin's painting, A Dance to the Music of Time in the Wallace Collection which was to inspire his own work.
Powell worked as a freelance writer, a book reviewer and wrote a regular column at the Daily Telegraph. Powell became friends with many famous people whom most of us have heard of, such as Malcolm Muggeridge, George Orwell, Evelyn Waugh, Julian MacLaren-Ross, Ivy-Compton Burnett, Kingsley Amis, and many other interesting people that I hadn't heard of before such as Gerald Reitlinger, Edward Burra, John Heygate etc. He seems to have formed deep and lasting friendships with many of these people and to have enjoyed socialising with them, possibly making up for his rather sombre childhood at home and young adulthood at university.
Powell began writing A Question of Upbringing, the first novel of 'Dance', in March 1948 and which was published in 1951. When the first volume was published Powell had envisaged the whole work as 'at least a trilogy' but he was to continue over the next twenty-five years to publish a new novel in the series roughly every two years. It was only when he was writing the volumes relating to WWII that he knew that it was going to consist of twelve volumes. Curiously, Spurling seems to race along with the narrative once Powell begins work on 'Dance' and even stranger is that the biography more or less ends with the publication of the last novel of the series. There's a Postscript which covers this period from 1975 up to Powell's death in 2000 but it appears rather rushed especially as Powell still produced a couple of novels and a four-volume set of memoirs during this period. This is my only criticism of this excellent biography and is recommended to anyone who has read the novels of Anthony Powell.
At first Anthony Powell's life doesn't seem to be a particularly interesting topic but as with his novel series, A Dance to the Music of Time, it is the characters that he comes in contact with as well as his reflections on them and himself that ends up making this an interesting book to read. Spurling doesn't attempt anything fancy, instead she cracks on from 1905, the year of Powell's birth, giving a brief description of Powell's mother and father and his childhood years before surging on. The opening sentences gives a picture of these early years.
Small, inquisitive and solitary, the only child of an only son, growing up in rented lodgings or hotel rooms, constantly on the move as a boy, Anthony Powell needed an energetic imagination to people a sadly under-populated world from a child's point of view. His mother and his nurse were for long periods the only people he saw, in general the one unchanging element in a peripatetic existence.
His mother was very introverted, religious and had a liking for the occult, whereas his father was explosive and demanding and mostly absent from Anthony's early life, especially once WWI began as he was an officer in the army. Spurling then covers Powell's school years at New Beacon School in Sevenoaks, Kent followed by Eton, where he became friends with Henry Green, and then on to Balliol College, Oxford, where he befriended Evelyn Waugh.
Although the sections on Powell's schooldays and university period are of interest as we get to see the young Anthony Powell and we can compare it with Nick Jenkin's life in the first novel of 'Dance', the biography really became interesting for me after he left university and he began work at the publishers Gerald Duckworth and Co. in London. It's here where we start to see several interesting characters filtering through Powell's life. Duckworth's was a strange publishers for young Powell to end up at as the owner seems rather uninterested in publishing books and tries to block any attempts to revitalise the firm. But it is at Duckworth's that Powell begins to experience life more fully and on his own terms. During this period he has love affairs, meets artists, buys a car and starts writing his first novel, Afternoon Men. Spurling does an excellent job in portraying the rather seedy bohemian lifestyle that Powell was immersed in. His rather dilapidated lodgings in Shepherd Market appealed to him as a counterpoint to his life at Oxford. Reading the chapters on this period in Powell's life has really made me want to read more of his pre-WWII (and pre-'Dance') novels, especially What's Become of Waring?, which is set in a publishers much like Duckworth's.
During a visit to Pakenham Hall, Ireland, he met and fell in love with Violet Pakenham, whom he married in 1934. Powell left Duckworth's and tried, but failed, to make it in Hollywood as a scriptwriter. During the war he entered the army as a Second Lieutenant and, like Nick Jenkins, ended up in Intelligence. The post-war years were somewhat difficult for Powell, as they must have been for nearly everyone. Spurling describes Powell's moments of depression during this period, convinced that he'd wasted the most productive years of his life and that he'd never write again. During the war years his sole work had been a biography of John Aubrey but it is during this period that he came across Nicolas Poussin's painting, A Dance to the Music of Time in the Wallace Collection which was to inspire his own work.
Powell worked as a freelance writer, a book reviewer and wrote a regular column at the Daily Telegraph. Powell became friends with many famous people whom most of us have heard of, such as Malcolm Muggeridge, George Orwell, Evelyn Waugh, Julian MacLaren-Ross, Ivy-Compton Burnett, Kingsley Amis, and many other interesting people that I hadn't heard of before such as Gerald Reitlinger, Edward Burra, John Heygate etc. He seems to have formed deep and lasting friendships with many of these people and to have enjoyed socialising with them, possibly making up for his rather sombre childhood at home and young adulthood at university.
Powell began writing A Question of Upbringing, the first novel of 'Dance', in March 1948 and which was published in 1951. When the first volume was published Powell had envisaged the whole work as 'at least a trilogy' but he was to continue over the next twenty-five years to publish a new novel in the series roughly every two years. It was only when he was writing the volumes relating to WWII that he knew that it was going to consist of twelve volumes. Curiously, Spurling seems to race along with the narrative once Powell begins work on 'Dance' and even stranger is that the biography more or less ends with the publication of the last novel of the series. There's a Postscript which covers this period from 1975 up to Powell's death in 2000 but it appears rather rushed especially as Powell still produced a couple of novels and a four-volume set of memoirs during this period. This is my only criticism of this excellent biography and is recommended to anyone who has read the novels of Anthony Powell.
February 11, 2019
I'm an almost lifetime fan of Anthony Powell's 12-volume masterpiece A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME, and Spurling's book is the first biography of Powell I know of that really focuses on his crowning achievement. Spurling knew Powell and his wife, Violet, and had access to rooms full (it seems) of Powell memorabilia, including his notebooks and sketchbooks, letters, and other valuable glimpses into the man behind the books.
In reading Powell's life, it was a little startling for me to realize that he and Violet were so poor (despite having bought a rather grand house) for so long. His first four novels earned widespread enthusiasm and the first three volumes of the DANCE provoked some of England's best critics into producing the kinds of reviews most writers only dream of, but for most of his career Powell earned the money that kept the wolf from their very fancy door by editing the literary page of PUNCH and other periodicals and writing endless reviews on a cash-on-delivery basis.
Everyone who's read the DANCE wonders about the real-life inspirations for some of the characters, and Spurling nails down some of them, but leaves as a mystery the series' most overwhelming character, the comic and sometimes not-so-comic monster Widmerpool. A really fascinating book for anyone who'd predisposed to be interested in one of the last century's greatest novelists. A little slow in places, but so is life.
In reading Powell's life, it was a little startling for me to realize that he and Violet were so poor (despite having bought a rather grand house) for so long. His first four novels earned widespread enthusiasm and the first three volumes of the DANCE provoked some of England's best critics into producing the kinds of reviews most writers only dream of, but for most of his career Powell earned the money that kept the wolf from their very fancy door by editing the literary page of PUNCH and other periodicals and writing endless reviews on a cash-on-delivery basis.
Everyone who's read the DANCE wonders about the real-life inspirations for some of the characters, and Spurling nails down some of them, but leaves as a mystery the series' most overwhelming character, the comic and sometimes not-so-comic monster Widmerpool. A really fascinating book for anyone who'd predisposed to be interested in one of the last century's greatest novelists. A little slow in places, but so is life.
January 21, 2018
This is wonderfully written biography of an outstanding author who, nowadays, is relatively unknown. Spurling's account of Tony, his acquaintances, his loves, and events in his life, reads almost like his Dance masterpiece itself. It is incredibly interesting, but yet very poignant - especially the last chapter.
Having read all of Powell's books, and now this recently published biography, I feel immensely proud to be writing my thesis on this author, and in doing so, attempting to dissolve the inaccurate and wrong snobbish image that people who have not read his novels have fixed onto him for no other reason that he spoke differently or held old fashioned values (he was 90 when he died).
Altogether a wonderful book that I will enjoy referring to in the course of my studies.
Having read all of Powell's books, and now this recently published biography, I feel immensely proud to be writing my thesis on this author, and in doing so, attempting to dissolve the inaccurate and wrong snobbish image that people who have not read his novels have fixed onto him for no other reason that he spoke differently or held old fashioned values (he was 90 when he died).
Altogether a wonderful book that I will enjoy referring to in the course of my studies.
September 29, 2019
Very interesting times and people. An amazing life and all the more engaging having read ‘Dance to the Music of Time’. Of course it is reflective of a certain cohort, mainly male, old school connections, supported often with some sort of yearly stipend from family. Shouldn’t generalize. Still they worked hard, were passionate thinkers, writers, artists, poets, soldiers, leaders. Women were a big part of their lives and there were a lot of famous women writers and artists. But these mainly not so well known. His wife wrote and I would like to get her take on life. They seemed to all enjoy social contacts over weekends and often a serious night life of parties and events. All set around in and between war times. The capacity for reading, writing and correspondence between friends was huge.
May 11, 2018
If you didn't know who Anthony Powell was, and hadn't read A Dance to the Music of Time, this would still be worth reading as an insight into the British Literary world. Most of the major players, from the 1920s onwards, some long forgotten, drift in and out of Powell's life in a way that is reminiscent of the way characters drift in and out of A Dance. Spurling handles the vast cast of characters and her prose is a pleasure to read.
If you do know who Powell was, and you've read A Dance, then this is probably essential reading.
If you do know who Powell was, and you've read A Dance, then this is probably essential reading.
July 30, 2018
"Tony needed a project to keep him sane through the coming months or years of war when it would be impossible to concentrate on anything so demanding as a novel. Wanting something scrappier and more prosaic, requiring no creative input, he picked biography instead."
A characteristic remark from a biographer almost as self-effacing as her subject matter. Probably there is no greater testament to Powell's disinterest in himself than one's desire to read his biography only a few months after reading his memoirs, and being constantly surprised by its contents. Some revelations came with the breaking down of accepted cliches concerning his class and attitudes: born to a socially-dubious pair of eccentrics, he might have been a (low-level) fixture of the London 20s deb scene, but he was still treated by Sacheverell Sitwell as 'an upper servant' - connectionless and without any great expectations, existing in a state of financial anxiety until his forties. He read modernist literature, frequented seedy nightclubs and moved primarily in the company of painters and penniless writers.
Other disclosures were less expected. I was taken aback to learn of his wife Violet having had an affair with an unknown man during the war, and felt a vicarious bottoming-out of the stomach on reading her disclosure to George Orwell's widow Sonia: 'he was the love my life.' Up until reading that I perhaps hadn't realised just how invested in Powell's life-story I really was - the sensation was close to personal affront. It is a curious demonstration of how one can be possessed, as A.S. Byatt would have it, by the authors one admires.
Appropriate, given her subject, Spurling barely permits the account a whole page before briskly moving on, pausing only to suggest its later importance as emotional weight behind Dance narrator Nick Jenkins' own romantic dealings with Jean Duport. However, on the whole Spurling is hesitant to engage in what Christopher Hitchens has elsewhere called literary England's 'favourite parlour game' - the matching up of Powell characters with their real life counterparts.
The book is straight-forward and lucid, quoting from a trove of letters and contemporary accounts, occasionally supplemented by Powell's own laconic autobiographical remarks. Yet something of the ultra-urbane edifice lingers. Spurling, who knew Powell from 1969 onwards, confines all personal experience to a final postscript, outlining his later years. Any hope of Aubrey-esque anecdote - Powell racing up Frome high street in desperate need of loo paper - remain unfulfilled. Perhaps it is precisely because she was a close friend that Spurling respectfully withholds the scatalogical incidents which must accrue in every person's life. The loyalty certainly makes itself known when she defends her subject from literary criticism: the only quoted bad reviews are from friends who have previously expressed admiration, being thus easily dismissed as back-stabbing or marks of jealousy. (Such is the appraisal of criticisms made by Philip Larkin, V.S. Naipaul, Malcom Muggeridge, Auberon Waugh). One might agree that they were callous, but it seems a sign of complacency on Spurling's part not to treat them seriously.
Powell's ultimate critical legacy is not touched on. Spurling goes no further than to (rightly) defend him from accusations of snobbishness, and to cast him as the most European of British writers: IE not someone to be enjoyed exclusively by the English upper classes.
A Dance to the Music of Time remains probably my favourite book. It is quiet and wry, devoid of undergraduate grandiloquence. Perhaps one might have expected a little more humour from his biographer, but otherwise a fittingly unemphatic read.
A characteristic remark from a biographer almost as self-effacing as her subject matter. Probably there is no greater testament to Powell's disinterest in himself than one's desire to read his biography only a few months after reading his memoirs, and being constantly surprised by its contents. Some revelations came with the breaking down of accepted cliches concerning his class and attitudes: born to a socially-dubious pair of eccentrics, he might have been a (low-level) fixture of the London 20s deb scene, but he was still treated by Sacheverell Sitwell as 'an upper servant' - connectionless and without any great expectations, existing in a state of financial anxiety until his forties. He read modernist literature, frequented seedy nightclubs and moved primarily in the company of painters and penniless writers.
Other disclosures were less expected. I was taken aback to learn of his wife Violet having had an affair with an unknown man during the war, and felt a vicarious bottoming-out of the stomach on reading her disclosure to George Orwell's widow Sonia: 'he was the love my life.' Up until reading that I perhaps hadn't realised just how invested in Powell's life-story I really was - the sensation was close to personal affront. It is a curious demonstration of how one can be possessed, as A.S. Byatt would have it, by the authors one admires.
Appropriate, given her subject, Spurling barely permits the account a whole page before briskly moving on, pausing only to suggest its later importance as emotional weight behind Dance narrator Nick Jenkins' own romantic dealings with Jean Duport. However, on the whole Spurling is hesitant to engage in what Christopher Hitchens has elsewhere called literary England's 'favourite parlour game' - the matching up of Powell characters with their real life counterparts.
The book is straight-forward and lucid, quoting from a trove of letters and contemporary accounts, occasionally supplemented by Powell's own laconic autobiographical remarks. Yet something of the ultra-urbane edifice lingers. Spurling, who knew Powell from 1969 onwards, confines all personal experience to a final postscript, outlining his later years. Any hope of Aubrey-esque anecdote - Powell racing up Frome high street in desperate need of loo paper - remain unfulfilled. Perhaps it is precisely because she was a close friend that Spurling respectfully withholds the scatalogical incidents which must accrue in every person's life. The loyalty certainly makes itself known when she defends her subject from literary criticism: the only quoted bad reviews are from friends who have previously expressed admiration, being thus easily dismissed as back-stabbing or marks of jealousy. (Such is the appraisal of criticisms made by Philip Larkin, V.S. Naipaul, Malcom Muggeridge, Auberon Waugh). One might agree that they were callous, but it seems a sign of complacency on Spurling's part not to treat them seriously.
Powell's ultimate critical legacy is not touched on. Spurling goes no further than to (rightly) defend him from accusations of snobbishness, and to cast him as the most European of British writers: IE not someone to be enjoyed exclusively by the English upper classes.
A Dance to the Music of Time remains probably my favourite book. It is quiet and wry, devoid of undergraduate grandiloquence. Perhaps one might have expected a little more humour from his biographer, but otherwise a fittingly unemphatic read.
Read
March 31, 2019A welcome addition to contemplation of AP and his achievement. There are a few errors (but of the sort AP himself committed in the Novels—time cues that do not gel, characters reversed). Many early responses have questioned Spurling’s decision to, in effect, ignore AP’s final quarter century, bringing the biography to a conclusion in tandem with AP himself completing DANCE in 1975. That perspective is not quite fair; Spurling gives a brief treatment of 1976-2000, mentioning the memoirs, novels, and journals of those years. One wonders if AP more or less stipulated a 1975 ‘cut-off’ as the terminus ad quem of his public life. The book adds relatively little to what I already knew of AP, but I have been a fanatic for 40 years. It is a good examination of his formative influences, his methods, and his accomplishments.
August 24, 2018
An interesting and valuable book about Tony Powell, author of the 12 volume series A Dance to the Music of Time. This is well loved within my family, and I'm very inspired now to read it myself. Spurling's biography has it all - his life story, an excellent analysis of his most famous works, and many enticing references to other writers of the times, with titles well worth following up if you're a fan. The author makes Tony Powell and his wife Violet very real people, living through all of the struggles, conflicts and hardships of the twentieth century. The biography's focus is on writing - mostly Tony's, but also many other known and unknown writers. We learn who and what inspired it, how and when it was done. Troubles with publishers feature a lot. Tony also worked within the publishing world, writing reviews and editing magazines. The people he meets across, close friends, family, work and army colleagues, all provide the basis of his writing. He was recognised as a brilliant chronicler of being human in the twentieth century, drifted out of sight a bit with current general readers, but his value is fully restored within this biography.
November 27, 2017
An exemplary biography, but the work is more fascinating than the life. Better that way.
September 9, 2019
A brilliantly researched, very readable biography of Anthony Powell, the author best known for the 12-part series 'A Dance to the Music of Time'.
That the author of this biography knew its subject seems an obvious advantage for her. However that is not to detract from the achievement here. In many ways this biography mirrors 'A Dance to the Music of Time' in that the account of Powell's life is told through interactions with a wide and rich cast of characters. What could be distracting tangents in a lesser writer's work, only add to the rich tapestry of Powell's life as told by Hilary Spurling. The author also mirrors her subject's brilliant one sentence portraits of people that capture so much with so few words.
Much has been written of Powell and indeed this biography but for me a couple of themes stood out:
1) Above all, for so superficially a privileged life, there was struggle. Struggle with his father, struggle at school in what sounded horrific conditions at a prep school, struggle at Oxford which he didn't enjoy, ongoing struggles with depression, with disappointing jobs, with relative poverty, in the army, with loss and later with friends who seemed to turn against him as he became more successful. He only seemed to gain financial independence at around 55 when his frugal and apparently poor father surprised him by leaving an unexpectedly large legacy when he died. Twenty-five years in the writing, all twelve volumes of ADTTMOT seem to have been a true struggle but one that made the author who he was.
2) His marriage to Violet was vital in its contribution, not only to his life but his creative work.
3) The 12 part work of ADTTMOT came to dominate his life for a quarter of century of writing as well time beforehand in its ideas being born. Once complete, there was a more than a sense of sadness and loss, despite the fact that the author was to live another 25 years and reach the grand old age of 94. There was also a sense that literary fashion and perceived political correctness swung unfairly against the author for a while in the 1960s and 1970s although this phase has passed now, I feel
A pedant's point 'a la Mr. Child', the accountant at Duckworth's Publishers or Blackhead in ADTTMOT, but maybe I share something with those two bores: I thought the references to honours refused and accepted mixed up the years of the Thatcher and the Heath governments.
However this is not really a book for pedants but for genuine Powell fans: a rich heart-felt biography that does not hide the author's deep affection for the subject. It is a book that illuminates the creative journey of a man whose legacy endures for readers today and whose books demonstrate, to apply Powell's quote on Shakespeare to Powell himself, "an extraordinary grasp of what other people were like".
That the author of this biography knew its subject seems an obvious advantage for her. However that is not to detract from the achievement here. In many ways this biography mirrors 'A Dance to the Music of Time' in that the account of Powell's life is told through interactions with a wide and rich cast of characters. What could be distracting tangents in a lesser writer's work, only add to the rich tapestry of Powell's life as told by Hilary Spurling. The author also mirrors her subject's brilliant one sentence portraits of people that capture so much with so few words.
Much has been written of Powell and indeed this biography but for me a couple of themes stood out:
1) Above all, for so superficially a privileged life, there was struggle. Struggle with his father, struggle at school in what sounded horrific conditions at a prep school, struggle at Oxford which he didn't enjoy, ongoing struggles with depression, with disappointing jobs, with relative poverty, in the army, with loss and later with friends who seemed to turn against him as he became more successful. He only seemed to gain financial independence at around 55 when his frugal and apparently poor father surprised him by leaving an unexpectedly large legacy when he died. Twenty-five years in the writing, all twelve volumes of ADTTMOT seem to have been a true struggle but one that made the author who he was.
2) His marriage to Violet was vital in its contribution, not only to his life but his creative work.
3) The 12 part work of ADTTMOT came to dominate his life for a quarter of century of writing as well time beforehand in its ideas being born. Once complete, there was a more than a sense of sadness and loss, despite the fact that the author was to live another 25 years and reach the grand old age of 94. There was also a sense that literary fashion and perceived political correctness swung unfairly against the author for a while in the 1960s and 1970s although this phase has passed now, I feel
A pedant's point 'a la Mr. Child', the accountant at Duckworth's Publishers or Blackhead in ADTTMOT, but maybe I share something with those two bores: I thought the references to honours refused and accepted mixed up the years of the Thatcher and the Heath governments.
However this is not really a book for pedants but for genuine Powell fans: a rich heart-felt biography that does not hide the author's deep affection for the subject. It is a book that illuminates the creative journey of a man whose legacy endures for readers today and whose books demonstrate, to apply Powell's quote on Shakespeare to Powell himself, "an extraordinary grasp of what other people were like".
October 6, 2025
I am re-reading The Dance to the Music of Time this year. One book per month. Along side the book I've been slowly reading the Hilary Spurling biography of Anthony Powell's life. This is a long book but the writer has a deep affection for her subject, whom she knew as a friend. She has converted her admiration into a compelling story about a writer who was deeply embedded in the life of his century. My only criticism of the book is there are too many names dropped about people who the average reader will not know.
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January 11, 2026This fits in perfectly with my second time through reading Powell’s dance. Early on, Spurling quotes a line from The Kindly Ones that also jumped out at me recently, “My father really hated clarity.” Interestingly, she attributes the statement directly to Powell rather than to his blatant fictional stand in in the novel.
I loved her previous book about Powell, a tremendous critical study of the entire 12-volume cycle.
I loved her previous book about Powell, a tremendous critical study of the entire 12-volume cycle.
February 4, 2020
Interesting to read about the intersections of Powell’s life and the Dance.
May 24, 2025
This was a fascinating book to read alongside my current 'Dance To The Music of Time' series read. So many elements of the Dance were taken from Tony's life and so it adds depth and insight to what is already one of my favourite collection of books.
December 2, 2017
Mine is a bit of an unfair review; this was presented in 5, 13-minute segments, and I caught only the last two. But those two covered the writing of Dancing to the Music of Time, which is what Powell is known for. I'm afraid I was distracted by the reader's presentation, which I found somewhat inappropriate. She read like it was a thriller, every word weighted with drama, when the fact of the matter was that it was rather mundane. If you are particularly interested in Powell, you would likely enjoy this biography. Otherwise, it didn't appear that there was anything unusual or exciting about his life that would keep the average person interested, and I'm certain that wasn't the result of the abridging. The reader, Hattie Morahan, furthermore had a tendency to use odd inflections. I realize the British inflect differently from Americans, but typically that's within a word itself. But when the inflection occurs within a phrase, such as "spring WATER" rather than "SPRING water", it affects the attention given. Suddenly one is focusing on the water itself, rather than the fact that it was a spring being highlighted. Momentarily distracted, I would find myself lost in the narrative and have to backtrack and replay the last few minutes. It was very good for inducing sleep, however.
July 9, 2018
Anthony Powell's A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME is one of the cornerstone works of literature in 20th century British literature and the author himself has been described as England's Proust. Even more than that, the long-lived Powell (1905 - 2000) was also right there in the center of everything that was going on in art, letters, music, film and television and Hilary Spurling's biography puts you right there alongside all those makers and shakers of the past. Whether it was growing up with Henry Green, almost publishing Evelyn Waugh's first novel, spending time with Aleister Crowley being best friends with Constance Lambert, and helping nurture the careers of Kingsley Amis and V. S. Naipul, almost every page has at least one reference to someone of note and if you put a little work into it, could become the source for a wicked game of six degrees of separation.
A fantastic biography of one of my favorite authors.
A fantastic biography of one of my favorite authors.
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December 9, 2023I'll probably have a look at this one just about every year, like Dance itself. Several new details which did not surface in Michael Barber's earlier but unauthorized biography. Mostly just pleasant to get a sense of Powell from someone who knew him fairly well over many years.
November 6, 2017
This is an exceptionally good biography, which relates the events of Powell's life to characters and events in his novels, especially 'Dance'. Very interesting, if you have read the novels.
November 4, 2017
I have not read any of Anthony Powell’s novels because apparently they are ponderous, so I thought I’d read this biography to get more background and appraisal of the writer. Sadly it turns out to be less than I wanted. You could get almost the same information from the pages of Wikipedia.
Powell’s mother was 15 years older than his father who appeared to require as much mothering as Anthony himself and it must have been with relief that he escaped to boarding at Eton at age 13. He himself wedded his wife only three weeks after they met and we are told only that it was a happy marriage. Subsequently she is barely mentioned except through miscarriages and births.
Spurring seems keener to tell us about other writers Powell met during his life rather than delve into Powell’s bouts of depression or how he dealt with them. When, Malcolm Muggeridge or Evelyn Waugh wrote scathing reviews of Powell’s novels, all Spurling can tell us is that Powell was hurt. Nor does she discuss the merits or otherwise of the novels. So plenty of scope has been left for someone else to write a more ambitious and insightful biography.
Freak Out! My Life with Frank Zappa
Powell’s mother was 15 years older than his father who appeared to require as much mothering as Anthony himself and it must have been with relief that he escaped to boarding at Eton at age 13. He himself wedded his wife only three weeks after they met and we are told only that it was a happy marriage. Subsequently she is barely mentioned except through miscarriages and births.
Spurring seems keener to tell us about other writers Powell met during his life rather than delve into Powell’s bouts of depression or how he dealt with them. When, Malcolm Muggeridge or Evelyn Waugh wrote scathing reviews of Powell’s novels, all Spurling can tell us is that Powell was hurt. Nor does she discuss the merits or otherwise of the novels. So plenty of scope has been left for someone else to write a more ambitious and insightful biography.
Freak Out! My Life with Frank Zappa
August 11, 2021
I read this immediately after I finished the twelve volumes of A Dance to the Music of Time. I wanted to prolong the time that I had spent in Powell's created world, to understand more of what had gone into the masterwork. This biography was at times disappointing, especially during some of the early chapters with interminable descriptions of the places and events and acquaintances of Powell's early years. But it picks up during the war years, and particularly during the early years of writing the Dance. I enjoyed hearing about some of the figures who served as models for characters in the book, although the author makes clear that all of the characters spring in truth and detail from Powell's fertile imagination. I also liked hearing about Powell's friends and admirers, including George Orwell, Evelyn Waugh, V.S. Naipaul, P.G. Wodehouse, and others. I learned that readers of the Dance have always been split into great admirers and critics, that it has come in and out of fashion. Considering that Powell was born into the world of Thomas Hardy and lived well into the world of Kazuo Ishiguro, it is perhaps remarkable that this work has aged as well as it has. The author finishes with a touching epilogue about her personal relationship with Powell near the end of his life. Time well spent for fans of A Dance to the Music of Time.
December 4, 2025
I picked this up to read after reading Powell's twelve novel series 'A Dance to the Music of Time' as I wanted to know a little more about Powell's life and work. Hilary Spurling was a friend of his, late in life, so I think this book is influenced by that a little but Spurling is a professional writer of biographies so I think is only really obvious in the Postscript.
The thing with Powell is a lot of his life is in 'A Dance to the Music of Time.' Not all of it but enough. This fleshes out the novels. Indeed in the novels the narrator, Nick, is an observer of others or a mirror so this is like revealing Nick to us all.
His life wasn't as easy as his later status might have hinted at. His father was an army officer with a terrible temper and his mother was almost agoraphobic and he was packed off to prep schools and then Eton. It's hard to see his childhood as much fun.
There was a lot of other stuff in this review but when I posted it Goodreads fucked it up. And I can't re-build it. So let's cut this short. It's a good read. It made me wish I'd met Anthony Powell and Violet his wife - who is a key part of his life and this book is as much a biography of a marriage as a single person.
And Goodreads are arseholes for their stupid crashing site.
The thing with Powell is a lot of his life is in 'A Dance to the Music of Time.' Not all of it but enough. This fleshes out the novels. Indeed in the novels the narrator, Nick, is an observer of others or a mirror so this is like revealing Nick to us all.
His life wasn't as easy as his later status might have hinted at. His father was an army officer with a terrible temper and his mother was almost agoraphobic and he was packed off to prep schools and then Eton. It's hard to see his childhood as much fun.
There was a lot of other stuff in this review but when I posted it Goodreads fucked it up. And I can't re-build it. So let's cut this short. It's a good read. It made me wish I'd met Anthony Powell and Violet his wife - who is a key part of his life and this book is as much a biography of a marriage as a single person.
And Goodreads are arseholes for their stupid crashing site.
January 28, 2018
I read Powell's "Dance to the Music of Time" sequence many years ago and thought it a great thing: marvelous in its entirety, subtle and ironic almost, although the early volumes might seem dated in language.
So I was very keen to read this biography by Hilary Spurling, a very reputable biographer and friend of Powell. Her story of the years of his youth is fascinating and detailed, particularly as it becomes married to his sequence of novels.
The big "But" for me is that I was disappointed by her account of his later years. The relationship to the cycle he was still writing seems sketchier and there are a lot of cultural cruises listed, but not even much detail there. In this sense I found this biography uneven. (Although there are pages of scrupulous reference notes.)
So I was very keen to read this biography by Hilary Spurling, a very reputable biographer and friend of Powell. Her story of the years of his youth is fascinating and detailed, particularly as it becomes married to his sequence of novels.
The big "But" for me is that I was disappointed by her account of his later years. The relationship to the cycle he was still writing seems sketchier and there are a lot of cultural cruises listed, but not even much detail there. In this sense I found this biography uneven. (Although there are pages of scrupulous reference notes.)
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January 10, 2023Biografie door een vriend van de familie is geen goed idee. De memoires ('To keep the ball rolling') worden samengevat, als naar de voetnoten kijkt. Soms correspondentie.
Het verhaal houdt op na de publicatie van het laatste deel de 'Dance to the music of time'. Anthony Powell was een centrale figuur in Engelse literaire scene, dus ontzettend veel namen genoemd. Maar daar staat tegenover dat er weinig achtergrond en umwelt wordt geschetst.
Het bevestigt wel het beeld van een conservatief deel van de Engelse elite, waar adel en oud geld nog steeds een belangrijke rol spelen. Enkele van de jongere figuren in het boek spelen zelfs een belangrijke rol in Brexit. Dit was ook al de indruk uit de 'Dance', maar dat speelde toch voornamelijk voor WOII.
Het verhaal houdt op na de publicatie van het laatste deel de 'Dance to the music of time'. Anthony Powell was een centrale figuur in Engelse literaire scene, dus ontzettend veel namen genoemd. Maar daar staat tegenover dat er weinig achtergrond en umwelt wordt geschetst.
Het bevestigt wel het beeld van een conservatief deel van de Engelse elite, waar adel en oud geld nog steeds een belangrijke rol spelen. Enkele van de jongere figuren in het boek spelen zelfs een belangrijke rol in Brexit. Dit was ook al de indruk uit de 'Dance', maar dat speelde toch voornamelijk voor WOII.
February 24, 2024
This is a serviceable, unremarkable book, which will give you pretty much just the facts. In some ways it's a parallel to 'Invitation to the Dance', the flawed but undeniably useful companion to 'A Dance to the Music of Time' that Hilary Spurling wrote before this biography and confirmation that she had sewn up the market in Powell studies before anyone else had got out of the starting blocks. Where did 'Dance' come from? What is its relationship to the mostly forgettable novels (I'll exempt 'Afternoon Men') that Powell produced before the Second World War? For many readers, like me, it's as if he started from scratch, conceptually and to a point, stylistically. But why, how? No real answers here. Maybe it's unfair to expect them though.
July 5, 2018
An excellent literary biography of a terrific writer. It is good to have a recap of Powell’s novels but I really enjoyed the history of twentieth century Grub St through the prism of a single life. Almost a factual version of William Boyd’s “Any Human Heart”. Powell, who lived from 1905-2000, wrote prolifically, served throughout the war and knew everyone is the perfect subject. In being a little picky, I’d have preferred Spurling not to have referred to her friend and subject as “Tony” throughout the text, and the decades after “Dance to the Music of Time” were highly condensed. A very worthwhile biography all the same.
January 18, 2020
This is a good biography of the author of one of the finest novel sequences in English literature. That said, I suspect that if you have not read "A Dance to the Music of Time", this life of Anthony Powell would not appeal to you, as you would quickly become disengaged from the Bohemian world in which Powell lived his life. But for those, like me, that have read and enjoyed "the Dance", this is an invaluable and informative account of Powell's upbringing, character and lifestyle.
I particularly commend the closing chapter which neatly describes the author's work and friendship with Powell during the final thirty years or so of his long life.
I particularly commend the closing chapter which neatly describes the author's work and friendship with Powell during the final thirty years or so of his long life.
June 12, 2022
Richly detailed with the kind of writing that allows the reader to immerse themselves in the fascinating life of a major literary figure. The best part are the chapters involved in the creation of the 12 Dance to the Music of Time book series which Powell is best known for. The research is incredible as even the most minute portions of Powells life are given exposure to create a work of art with this biography itself. Highly recommended.
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