'He is, as Proust was before him, the great chronicler of his culture in his time.' Guardian

'Astonishingly accurate, not just the comedies of incongruity but the gathering menace of the real war beyond.' Financial Times

'A sheer delight.' Observer

'A Dance to the Music of Time' is universally acknowledged as one of the great works of English literature. Now in the first volume's 75th anniversary year, this twelve-volume series is ready to delight and entrance a new generation of readers.

In this seventh volume, Britain once again finds itself plunged into global war. Called to do his duty, Nick Jenkins must leave his pregnant wife, Isobel, and his life in London to take up his position as a Second Lieutenant in the Welsh infantry. Grappling with endless regulations and the tedious routines of military life, it is not long before he finds himself in the middle of a dispute between his commanding officer, Captain Gwatkin, and Lieutenant Bithel.

Finding himself stationed in Northern Ireland, military life is not what it had seemed, and Nick finds himself longing for the comforts of home. But when the battalion is transferred to an unknown location, Nick is reunited with a familiar face.

Praise for 'A Dance to the Music of Time'
'A world as rich as Joyce's on the one hand and P. G. Wodehouse's on the other.' Guardian
'One of the great novel-sequences in English Literature.' William Boyd
'One of the greatest pleasures of my reading life.' Michael Palin
'An epic, elegant masterpiece.' Lauren Groff
'A joyous experience.' Roddy Doyle
'An intricately wrought work of art.' John Banville
'The finest long comic novel that England has produced.' Anthony Burgess
'Mr Powell's imagination is inexhaustible.' Evelyn Waugh
'One of English fiction's few twentieth-century masterpieces.' London Review of Books
'There is no other novelist whose work gives so much or such consistent pleasure.' Times Literary Supplement