“In the manner of the best literary biographers, Spurling fluidly incorporates the life and works of British novelist Anthony Powell, whose 12-novel sequence, A Dance to the Music of Time...remains one of the high-watermarks of the twentieth-century literature.... One hopes that this impeccable, thoroughly readable biography will help bring new readers to an author whose central subject, ‘human beings behaving,’ should never go out of fashion.” (Bill Ott, Booklist)     

“Hilary Spurling’s new biography, Anthony Powell: Dancing to the Music of Time, is a fond portrayal of the man sometimes called ‘the English Proust’.... [Spurling] is a superb biographer...and this new book is everything readers have come to expect from her. It’s thorough, judicious and gracefully written.” (Charles McGrath, The New Yorker) 

“Spurling, author of well-received biographies of artists and writers such as Henri Matisse and novelist Ivy Compton-Burnett, offers the definitive account of Anthony Powell, one of the most prominent and respected 20th-century writers.... Spurling is especially good at delineating Powell’s many relationships with...leading literary figures such as George Orwell, Malcom Muggeridge, Constant Lambert, the Sitwells, Evelyn Waugh, and Graham Green.” (Morris Hounion, Library Journal)