A Dance to the Music of Time

The story is an often comic examination of movements and manners, power and passivity in English political, cultural and military life in the mid-20th century.

This reminds him of "the ancient world—legionaries ... mountain altars ... centaurs ..." These classical projections introduce the account of his schooldays, which opens A Question of Upbringing.

[6] In 2019 Christopher de Bellaigue wrote in The Nation that A Dance to the Music of Time is "perhaps the supreme London novel of the 20th century, an examination of the human behavior that defines the upper echelons of this brash, resilient, often pitiless place.

[8] Jenkins reflects on the Poussin painting in the first two pages of A Question of Upbringing: These classical projections, and something from the fire, suddenly suggested Poussin's scene in which the Seasons, hand in hand and facing outward, tread in rhythm to the notes of the lyre that the winged and naked greybeard plays.

The image of Time brought thoughts of mortality: of human beings, facing outward like the Seasons, moving hand in hand in intricate measure, stepping slowly, methodically sometimes a trifle awkwardly, in evolutions that take recognisable shape: or breaking into seemingly meaningless gyrations, while partners disappear only to reappear again, once more giving pattern to the spectacle: unable to control the melody, unable, perhaps, to control the steps of the dance.Poussin's painting is housed at the Wallace Collection in London.

Its 12 novels have been acclaimed by such critics as A. N. Wilson and fellow writers including Evelyn Waugh and Kingsley Amis as among the finest English fiction of the 20th century.

The cycle was adapted as a four-part TV series A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell and Hugh Whitemore for Channel 4 in 1997, directed by Christopher Morahan and Alvin Rakoff.