Anthony Powell. Dance to the Music of Time.

[salymap]

This is not a recent broadcast but I wondered if Col Danby, who mentioned these books,or anyone elsewould like to revive memories of them. I read some of them over 60 years ago [] so would love to hear of recent converts. I csn only remember titles like 'The Acceptance World'??? and 'At Lady Molly's' ??? both probably wrong. I know at 18 they took me into an entire world I didn't know.

[Mandryka]

On my 'to to be read one day' pile.

I know that Powell's intrinsic Toryism puts a lot of potential readers off.

[johnb]

I read them about ten years ago and the book that stuck in my mind more than any other was the one set at the end of WWII. I found it extremely, and movingly, evocative of the times.

[antongould]

I am like Mandryka - on my list to read if/when I retire. I have read about 3 out of order and enjoyed them all! Also heard the BBC Radio adaptation

[salymap]

Was there a character called Widmerpool who upset everyone else? Alas I borrowed them from the library so can't even check on them. I think there were 12 volumes in all, I only read three or four.

[Mandryka]

Was there a character called Widmerpool who upset everyone else? Alas I borrowed them from the library so can't even check on them. I think there were 12 volumes in all, I only read three or four.

C4 televised it in the 90s. Simon Russell Beale played Widmerpool who was, according to some sources, based on Ted Heath (the politician, not the bandleader).

[amateur51]

C4 televised it in the 90s. Simon Russell Beale played Widmerpool who was, according to some sources, based on Ted Heath (the politician, not the bandleader).

I can't believe that Anthony Powell would have pandered to Margaret Thatcher

[Norfolk Born]

I read them about ten years ago and the book that stuck in my mind more than any other was the one set at the end of WWII. I found it extremely, and movingly, evocative of the times.

Would that be 'Books Do Furnish A Room'?

[kernelbogey]

I read all twelve volumes of this sequence over a period of ten or more years, twenty years back. What I liked was the sense of a series of relationships which developed and mingled over a very long time span. I too found the wartime volume the most affecting, suggesting that this was the time at which the author was most in touch with his emotions. Of course the world portrayed is one of a narrow coterie of figures from the establishment, yet it is no less a human story for all that. I wonder whether it would now read a little datedly, if one can say that; certainly it is written in what one might call a classical style of English prose. Widmerpool appears in the first pages of the first volume, and dies, if I recall correctly, while dancing in the open air with a curious sect, in the last volume. I think he's a rather more rounded and colourful character than I think Ted Heath was.

[mercia]

I remember the TV series, Simon R-B playing the same part from schoolboy onwards

http://www.anthonypowell.org.uk/home.php?page=M01

[french frank]

Strange how so few of them seem to have ordinary names of the Smith, Brown and Robinson variety.

[salymap]

There is an interesting amount of detail on wiki I've found, including who the various characters were based on. Can't remember but it certainly wasn't Ted Heath.

[amateur51]

Strange how so few of them seem to have ordinary names of the Smith, Brown and Robinson variety.

Just as with the novels of Iris Murdoch, ff