Hilary Spurling writes about Powell's own memoirs: "following up the Dance [the twelve volumes of Dance to the Music of Time] at intervals of a year or two with four successive instalments of these entertaining and instructive memoirs in which he himself barely figures." Unfortunately it seems as though Powell barely figures in Spurling's biography. Powell's life, like that of most writers, consists of sitting at his desk and writing while occasionally interacting with his family: his wife Violet and two sons, Tristram and John. We hear little enough about Powell's family but a great deal about his friends, from the prominent (Evelyn Waugh and George Orwell) to the significant (Constant Lambert and Gerald Reitlinger), from Eton and Oxford to his first job at Gerald Duckworth publishers (Powell's salary subsidized by his father), his time as a soldier in WW II, his book reviewing and the later years of his life at the Chantry, his home in Somerset.
Some of the most interesting parts of Powell's life, especially his time as a screenwriter (when he sought employment in Hollywood and met F. Scott Fitzgerald there) and his role in the censorship trial of Fanny Hill, are better covered in Powell's memoirs than they are in Spurling's biography. Spurling has previously written a guide to Powell's Dance to the Music of Time and reiterates in this biography the real-life "models" for some of the recurring characters, though why this should be of particular interest to anyone eludes me; reading the marvelous and elegant prose of the twelve volumes of Dance to the Music of Time will in no way be enhanced by knowing the details of Powell's life, though one does learn from Spurling every pub Powell frequented and with whom he lifted a pint, as well as the ups and downs of the literary life in London in the twentieth century.
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