Anthony Powell and the Cold War Conscience of the Novel Series

Although the most characteristic fictional mode of the period, the mid-twentieth-century novel sequence attracts little critical attention. Of particular interest for exploring its temporal distinctiveness are those autobiographical sequences that were acclaimed in their 1950s and 1960s time as Second World War books, but which were, this essay argues, essentially Cold War endeavours. Focusing on Anthony Powell's representation of his wartime work with the forces-in-exile of occupied Poland in A Dance to the Music of Time (1951–75), this essay considers the unrivalled affordances of the novel series for the reanimation of historical events not as past but as ongoing process.