During the eighties, while working on a novel which had become 'stuck', Anthony Powell, one of the greatest of twentieth-century Enlgish novelists, began writing a journal. Gossipy, delightful, sometimes barbed, these journals give a fascinating insight into the writer's life: the people he met, the places her visited and the parties he went to. The acute intelligence and wit which has made A Dance to the Music of Time one of the best loved novels in English is ever-present in these papers, where the reader will encounter Osbert Lancaster, Kingsley Amis, Philip Larkin, Lord Longford - all viewed with affection and a startling frankness.