For those who don't know him, Anthony Powell is an English writer who put out five very good novels in the 30's and a dozen not quite as good, collectively called "A Dance to the Music of Time," between then and now….

Now Mr. Powell is writing his memoirs, and he has every reason to. England is a small country and it appears, from "Faces in My Time," the third volume of another projected series, that the author knew almost everyone worth knowing in his day. He tells us, for example, that Elizabeth Bowen was blind to cockroaches in her kitchen, that Dylan Thomas fell asleep under a bed in which two women were unsuccessfully trying to make love, that Somerset Maugham prided himself on a rather inadequate knowledge of British social protocol, that F. Scott Fitzgerald was surprised that Lord Donegall should be surprised when he used...