The title of the book had its origin in an incident in which Powell was a passenger in a car driven by his friend, the Old Etonian screenwriter Thomas Wilton ("Tommy") Phipps.

'"[1] A Question of Upbringing opens with the narrator reflecting on a view of some men working outside in the cold, and this leads to an eventual reference to Poussin's painting A Dance to the Music of Time.

The character of a more senior student, Kenneth Widmerpool, is the subject of the initial remembrances; there is also a recollection of a visit from Nick's Uncle Giles and a practical joke played by Stringham on the boys' school housemaster.

Nick goes to university, where he encounters Sillery (a don whose main interest is establishing connections and pulling strings), fellow students Mark Members and J.G.

Nick realizes that the connections among the boyhood trio of friends, while maybe never particularly tight, have now almost entirely loosened: each is going his own way, at least for a time, until they are again brought into contact one with another as part of the "Dance."