Anthony Powell's universally acclaimed epic encompasses a four-volume panorama of twentieth century London. Hailed by Time as "brilliant literary comedy as well as a brilliant sketch of the times," A Dance to the Music of Time opens just after World War I. Amid the fever of the 1920s and the first chill of the 1930s, Nick Jenkins and his friends confront sex, society, business, and art. In the second volume they move to London in a whirl of marriage and adulteries, fashions and frivolities, personal triumphs and failures. These books "provide an unsurpassed picture, at once gay and melancholy, of social and artistic life in Britain between the wars" (Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.). The third volume follows Nick into army life and evokes London during the blitz. In the climactic final volume, England has won the war and must now count the losses.

In this third volume of "A Dance to the Music of Time," we again meet Widmerpool, doggedly rising in rank; Jenkins, shifted from one dismal army post to another; Stringham, heroically emerging from alcoholism; Templer, still on his eternal sexual quest. Here, too, we are introduced to Pamela Flitton, one of the most beautiful and dangerous women in modern fiction. Wickedly barbed in its wit, uncanny in its seismographic recording of human emotions and social currents, this saga stands as an unsurpassed rendering of England's finest yet most costly hour.

Includes these novels:

"The Valley of Bones"

"The Soldier's Art"

"The Military Philosophers"

"Anthony Powell is the best living English novelist by far. His admirers are addicts, let us face it, held in thrall by a magician."--"Chicago Tribune"

"A book which creates a world and explores it in depth, which ponders changing relationships and values, which creates brilliantly living and diverse characters and then watches them grow and change in their milieu. . . . Powell's world is as large and as complex as Proust's."--Elizabeth Janeway, "New York Times"

"One of the most important works of fiction since the Second World War. . . . The novel looked, as it began, something like a comedy of manners; then, for a while, like a tragedy of manners; now like a vastly entertaining, deeply melancholy, yet somehow courageous statement about human experience."--Naomi Bliven, " New Yorker"

安东尼·鲍威尔被称为“英国的普鲁斯特”，“二十世纪英国小说家中最欧洲的”。他是家中独子，父亲是个脾气极坏的军官，他小时候多半住在租的房子或者宾馆房间里，他母亲在结婚头两年里搬了九次家。十岁时他就去了寄宿学校，和亨利·约克（也就是将来的小说家亨利·格林）成了好朋友。两人一起上了伊顿公学，再一起进入牛津。贵族名校刻意为之的清苦生活并不是人人能够忍受，鲍威尔读书时得了忧郁症，几乎每天都盼着能赶紧毕业。毕业后鲍威尔靠父亲的老关系去了一间出版社工作，和伊夫林·沃成了好朋友，继而结识了著名的西特韦尔姐妹。亨利·格林成名甚早，鲍威尔感觉到了少年伙伴的俯就态度，渐渐疏远；他开始为格雷厄姆·格林编辑的杂志写稿后，又跟这一位格林吵翻。鲍威尔的第一次恋情是跟年纪较长的文艺圈女神妮娜·哈姆内特，她认识布朗库西，跟莫迪里阿尼共用一间画室，百花里的画家罗杰·弗莱是她的老情人。后来鲍威尔跟一位出身书香门第、颇有文才的贵族小姐维奥莱特·帕肯汉姆结了婚，没钱用的时候，鲍威尔几乎每天写一篇书评赚稿费。1953年他去《笨拙》当文学编辑，才算有了一份得体稳定的收入。打那以后的很多年里，他三天去伦敦工作，两天在家里写小说。从1951到1975年，他出版了十二卷的小说巨著《与时间之乐共舞》（书名来自尼古拉斯·普桑的同名画作），风趣地描绘了二十世纪中期英国的政治、文化、军队生活。斯珀林与鲍威尔是忘年交，她十分尊重鲍威尔，但也没有回避他生平中的敏感问题，比如二战中维奥莱特曾在丈夫参军期间出轨，还有鲍威尔后来与奈保尔等前友人反目成仇的事。