Although Anthony Powell produced five charming, self-contained, intermittently profound novels before World War II and has published two plays, his place as a major writer of fiction rests upon A Dance to the Music of Time, the roman-fleuve in twelve volumes--A Question of Upbringing, A Buyer's Market, The Acceptance World, At Lady Molly's, Casanova's Chinese Restaurant, The Kindly Ones, The Valley of Bones, The Soldier's Art, The Military Philosophers, Books Do Furnish a Room, Temporary Kings, and Hearing Secret Harmonies --which came out between 1951 and 1975. The life of its narrator, Nicholas Jenkins, and the life of Powell have many similarities, though the work is not pure autobiography. Like Jenkins, Powell comes from ancient, aristocratic Welsh lineage but has been comprehensively anglicised. Powell had a standard upper-class English education at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford. The son of a regular army officer, he was born early in the...