Anthony Powell review: Hilary Spurling's life of the great English novelist

It is now four decades since Anthony Powell completed his 12-novel series, A Dance to the Music of Time, written over a quarter of a century. It is also 18 years this month since his death, at the age of 94, and, at last, the much anticipated and well-overdue authorised biography by Hilary Spurling, has appeared.

But first, how well has this unique opus worn? With a title taken from Poussin's masterpiece of the four seasons, Dance, has been described as "Proust Englished by P.G. Wodehouse" but perhaps Powell's closely-observed study of 20th-century bohemacy has suffered from being too real: its texture a trifle tweedy; its colours slightly faded. He is not an escapist like Wodehouse; a moralist like Orwell, nor a satirist like Waugh. And yet his 3000 pages, 1 million words and nearly 500 characters are still a singular and extraordinary achievement – a very English life over 60 years through the eyes of Nicholas Jenkins.

Auberon Waugh said on the publication of his father's diaries, "[They] show that the world of Evelyn Waugh's novels did in fact exist". This is even truer of his friend and contemporary. Powell's Dance is not just a roman-fleuve; it is also largely a roman-a-clef. In essence, Nick Jenkins IS Anthony Powell.

They were both born into the British military caste (Anthony Dymoke Powell – he insisted on the Welsh pronunciation, Pole – was born the only child of Lt-Colonel Philip Powell, DSO, CBE and Maud Wells-Dymoke, in 1905). Both Jenkins and Powell were educated at Eton and Oxford; both took their friends from the upper classes and a more mobile bohemian crowd and from there they both took lovers; both published their first novels in 1931; both wed earls' daughters from large families (Powell married Lady Violet Pakenham, sister of that old campaigner, Lord Longford); both had two sons.

Come the Second World War, Jenkins joined the Intelligence Corps and became, like Powell, a liaison officer. Both were literary editors before settling in the country to resume their careers as novelists (the Powells bought a limestone Regency house called The Chantry in north Somerset – thus completing his double – a wife with a title and a house with a drive).

And it was not just the narrator. To the abiding irritation of the author, "spotting the original" became a sport for Powell fans, particularly the inspiration for his anti-hero, Kenneth Widmerpool. Powell's brother-in-law, Frank Pakenham, would take peculiar pleasure in seeing himself in Widmerpool (there was a probably more of him in Lord Erridge). Widmerpool was surely his most developed fictional character; but many others were taken from life: Hugh Moreland (Constant Lambert); X Trapnel (Julian Maclaren-Ross); Mark Members (Peter Quennell); Lindsay Bagshaw (Malcolm Muggeridge); Quiggin (Cyril Connolly); Pamela Flitton (Barbara Skelton).

Spurling's knowledge and analysis of the novels is absorbing and acute. But among such a colourful cast, Jenkins in art – and Powell, in life – are elbowed off the stage. And shadowy he remains, even after 429 pages. Tellingly – it could be Powell – one of the characters in Afternoon Men, his first pre-Dance novel, asks "Do you mind if I speak plainly?" "Yes ... I do. I should hate it."

Spurling writes with grace and great authority. She also writes with great affection for her subject. He was, after all, a friend. While other gifted biographers – take David Marr's superb Patrick White – are unflinchingly honest in their approach, one tends to think Spurling has gone soft on him. In my view, Michael Barber's distinctly unauthorised life (2004) deserves pole position.

Apart from a 14-page postscript, Spurling has chosen to end Powell's life on his completion of Dance. Yet he had another quarter century to live – increasingly crusty, remote and squire-like – he collected three volumes of his reviews, wrote two more novels, four unrevealing volumes of memoirs and three unintentionally revealing journals; the last exposing a high-and-dry Tory, obsessive genealogist and a diarist as waspish and liverish as his friend, James Lees-Milne.

But Anthony Powell, the novelist, deserves to be read and though, like the last century, it was not a merry one, his Dance can be enjoyed – its elegant ebb and flow, its cadences and coincidences; its galaxy of recurring characters; and its message that time takes its toll.