The magic of Anthony Powell

Every few years I’ve picked up one or other of Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time series and laid it aside after a few pages. Too wordy. Earlier this year I glanced again at A Question of Upbringing, the first of the 12 novels. A light came on and I was captured — providing yet another example of a novel repelling or attracting according to age, circumstances or mood. After that I tittered my way through the series, wondering at my previous humourlessness. I had one volume to go when I went into hospital last week for a minor operation, Hearing Secret Harmonies (1975), which I packed with my pyjamas.

I received my discharge papers on a Friday afternoon. I got dressed and said farewell to the old man with whom I’d shared the room, who looked astonished, as though unaware of my presence until that moment. But before heading home, I had one last hospital appointment, a scan, scheduled at another Marseille hospital, situated a ten-minute walk from the first.