Charles Shapiro

ANTHONY POWELL, the ultra-urbane British novelist, is, by
birth and choice, firmly and safely part of the Establish-
ment. Residing pleasantly in Somerset, he can reflect on
his schooling at Eton and Oxford, his friendships with
both George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh, and, from a posi-
tion on the uncommitted right, watch the changes in
English society. Admired, paradoxically enough, by both
the Angrys and their well-deployed enemies, his fiction is,
in essence, the work of a cultured wit who is able to
comfortably scan his own age. Best of all, he never goes
beyond what he knows and feels. The territory of his
twelve novels is, therefore, based on a world he under-
stands and loves, and because he does not care so much, his
humor has meaning as well as bite. Powell very well might
be England's best comic writer since Charles Dickens.

Powell is chiefly known, of course, for his last seven
novels, part of an ambitious cycle entitled A Dance to the
Music of Time, ¹ a work that will ultimately total twelve
volumes. This remarkable project is an elaborate class
comedy which explores the soul of modern Britain. Its
popularity has been explained by Malcolm Muggeridge
who feels we are now in an age when too little really
matters. "Decaying societies, like decaying teeth, invite the
tongue to probe, and touch the exposed nerve."

Powell's early probings were done in his five prewar

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