The Kindly Ones

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Summary

'He is, as Proust was before him, the great literary chronicler of his culture in his time.' GUARDIAN

'A Dance to the Music of Time' is universally acknowledged as one of the great works of English literature. Reissued now in this definitive edition, it stands ready to delight and entrance a new generation of readers.

In this sixth volume, with Britain on the brink of war yet again, Nick Jenkins reflects back on his childhood growing up in the shadow of World War I. Wanting to follow in his father’s footsteps, Nick sets his sights on becoming an officer in the Army, and asks his old school friend Widmerpool, who is gaining prominence in the business world, if he will help him. But reserves lists are quickly filling up with names, and it’s not long until the threat of war is the one thing on everyone’s mind.

Reviews

One of the great novel-sequences in English Literature – a wonderful portrait of society, full of insight into the complexities of human behaviour, richly detailed and shrewdly funny.
William Boyd

About the author

Anthony Powell

Anthony Powell was an only child, born in 1905. As a young man he worked for a crumbling publishing business whilst trying to find time to write novels. He moved in a bohemian world of struggling writers and artists, which was to provide the raw material for much of his fiction. During the Second World War he served in Military Intelligence Liaison. He subsequently became a fiction reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement and for five years he was the literary editor of the now-defunct magazine Punch. Meanwhile he continued to work on the twelve-novel sequence ‘A Dance to the Music of Time’. He was the author of seven other novels, and four volumes of memoirs. His many reviews for the Daily Telegraph are also published in collected volumes. Anthony Powell died in March 2000.

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