To celebrate the centenary of Anthony Powell’s birth next year an exhibition is being planned at the Wallace Collection in Lon- don, which houses Poussin’s ‘A Dance to the Music of Time’, the work of art that inspired the novelist’s panoramic 12- volume sequence. The official biography, to be written by Hilary Spurling, a former literary editor of this magazine whose Handbook to Dance is an indispensable companion for all Powell fans, is still a long way off, but in the meantime we have this unauthorised life by Michael Barber, in which he sets out to try to ‘relate the man to his work’.
In the circumstances (‘certain doors were closed to me and certain resources withheld’) he has done a remarkably good job and, though one might not always find oneself in agreement with him or feel that he may perhaps have missed some of Powell’s subtler nuances, he makes a mass of stimulating, thought-provoking points. Like his previous biography of Simon Raven (The Captain), this study of Powell is very readable; indeed I have read it twice in proof with immense enjoyment and I am looking forward to another session with the book itself.
Unfortunately, though, Barber gets off on the wrong foot by appearing to mock Powell’s insistence on his being Welsh and pronouncing his surname to rhyme with No
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