Hearing Secret Harmonies (Dance to the Music of Time)

‘He is, as Proust was before him, the great chronicler of his culture in his time.’ Guardian

‘A joyous experience. I remember wishing there’d been more than twelve volumes.’ Roddy Doyle

‘A long, varied, intelligent and funny narrative that will be a joy to us all for years to come.’ Philip Larkin

‘A Dance to the Music of Time’ is universally acknowledged as one of the great works of English literature. Now in the first volume’s 75th anniversary year, this twelve-volume series is ready to delight and entrance a new generation of readers.

In this final volume of Anthony Powell’s epic masterpiece ‘A Dance to the Music of Time’, the sixties are in full swing and Nick Jenkins and his wife Isobel are living out their later years in the countryside. Not content with a quiet retirement, Nick’s old school friend, Widmerpool, is on the rise yet again, this time being appointed chancellor of a new university.

Yet, while Nick and his contemporaries are settling into a slower pace of life, the rise of sixties counterculture signals a new generation pushing its way forward. As The Dance draws to a close, a wedding brings together old faces one final time.

Praise for 'A Dance to the Music of Time’
‘A world as rich as Joyce's on the one hand and P. G. Wodehouse’s on the other.’ Guardian
‘One of the great novel-sequences in English Literature.’ William Boyd
‘One of the greatest pleasures of my reading life.’ Michael Palin
‘An epic, elegant masterpiece.’ Lauren Groff
‘A joyous experience.’ Roddy Doyle
‘An intricately wrought work of art.’ John Banville
‘The finest long comic novel that England has produced.’ Anthony Burgess
‘Mr Powell’s imagination is inexhaustible.’ Evelyn Waugh
‘One of English fiction’s few twentieth-century masterpieces.’ London Review of Books
‘There is no other novelist whose work gives so much or such consistent pleasure.’ Times Literary Supplement