Despite Powell's inexhaustible interest in the highly competitive literary and artistic life of London, he has never shown the slightest desire to gain power for himself, a characteristic that helps explain the strange, almost anthropological interest with which he examines those men—of whom the power-hungry are the most obvious example—whose public image of themselves is so important to them that they subdue their whole natures to it.

With this insight into the folkways of men of will, Powell gives us an understanding of a fundamental distinction of character in twentieth-century life. His sense of its refinement is remarkable….

Powell is specially fascinated by the comic predicament of men of will who, though wholly engrossed by personal policy, are pitifully incapable of effective action…. (p. 80)

It is possible to work out the chronology of The Music of Time, but there are astonishingly few dates in it. It...