Anthony Powell was born on 21 December, 1905, with a silver-plated spoon in his mouth, his father being a regular officer in a dim regiment of the line and his mother a Wells-Dymoke (of the Lincolnshire family which supplies the new Monarch's Champion at coronations). From the time when he was first old enough to assess these circumstances Mr Powell has accepted them, as he has accepted all others of his life, with quiet, well informed and ironic amusement, unperturbed by envy on the one hand or guilt on the other. What is given is given, in this world as in Euclid's, and it is very silly and perverse to fret oneself about it.

This is one message of Infants of the Spring. The second is that such uncomplaining acceptance does not amount to passivity. Civilised acceptance implies civilised understanding, the latter of which teaches one, not indeed to attempt...