It is difficult to determine whether Anthony Powell's stance as a completely unremarkable man is the result of art or nature. Occasional passages [in Infants of Spring and Messengers of Day] seem to contain irony so subtle as to be almost invisible, but for the most part his portraits of contemporaries are neither vivid nor searching, and his literary judgments, including those of his own work completed or in progress, are commonplace. (pp. 511-12)

Others have conveyed more vividly the atmosphere of Eton, Oxford and London in the 1920s, and Powell alludes to and frequently comments on the reminiscences of such contemporaries as Henry Yorke (the novelist Henry Green), Cyril Connolly, George Orwell and—the writer to whom he is inevitably compared—Evelyn Waugh. These writers convey impressions through vivid phrases; Powell deals in sober facts. For instance, he is aware that not everyone will know the composition...