It is astonishing how an epoch can grow cold. All it takes, or so it would seem, is a sufficient number of memoirs mixed with the requisite stories and nicknames, all repeated and confused by whatever rendition is at hand. It has happened before and, undoubtedly, will happen again….

Now, in the second volume of Anthony Powell's memoirs [Messengers of Day], the cast of London in the '20s is brought forth for one more turn at the footlights, a cast wearily familiar by now: He-Evelyn and She-Evelyn (Waugh), Osbert and Dame Edith, Brian on the beach and Tallulah on the floor. Somewhere between Balliol and Dunkirk the British intelligentsia must have conspired to get sick on the same oysters and champagne, for as surely as our hero leaves one dinner party we know before he tells us where he's going.

This is disappointing because Anthony Powell, now...