Temporary Kings by Anthony Powell is the eleventh volume of the chef d’oeuvre A Dance To The Music of Time, which is included on some of the most prestigious (perhaps all of them) lists: The All-TIME 100 Best Novels, The Modern Library’s Best 100 Novels, and it is ranked 329th on the Greatest Books of All Time site, most important for this space, it is one of my Top 50 Favorites…you have thousands of reviews of magnum opera from the aforementioned and other lists on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html and YouTube channel, where my macaws are the stars

 

Temporary Kings by Anthony Powell is the eleventh volume of the chef d’oeuvre A Dance To The Music of Time, which is included on some of the most prestigious (perhaps all of them) lists: The All-TIME 100 Best Novels, The Modern Library’s Best 100 Novels, and it is ranked 329th on the Greatest Books of All Time site, most important for this space, it is one of my Top 50 Favorites…you have thousands of reviews of magnum opera from the aforementioned and other lists on my blog  https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html and YouTube channel, where my macaws are the stars

 


10 out of 10

 

I am coming to the end of the masterpiece https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2026/05/books-do-furnish-room-by-anthony-powell.html A Dance To The Music of Time, Temporary Kings is the one before last, and although I am sorry to end this delightful ride, for the second time, there is always a third encounter

 

For this fascinating episode, we are taken to Venice, where a conference takes place, Nick Jenkins is invited, on the pretext that they will be like ‘Temporary Kings’, we have some other familiar personages: Pamela and Kenneth Widmerpool, Odo Stevens, but we find some new figures, such as Russell Gwinnett, a would-be biographer

The American wants to write a book about X Trapnel – based on another favorite author of mine Julian MacLaren Ross https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2024/04/of-love-and-hunger-by-julian-maclaren.html - and he wants to talk with the narrator, and Pamela Widmerpool, the latter would have a crush on the younger man

 

One palace in Venice has a painted ceiling, where the king of Lydia, Candaules, invites his chief officer and friend, Gyges, to see his wife naked, without her knowledge, but as she becomes aware, she will warn Gyges that: either he kills the king and marries her, or else she would have Candaules execute his friend

This would have implications on Pamela Widmerpool and her husband, both involved in scandals – spoiler alert, which feels preposterous, especially given that this is the eleventh part, ergo there is a puzzle here, who would read the review and then pick up the one before last installment? – that will be in the headlines

 

The villain of this magnum opus is accused of having the same habits as the king of Lydia, furthermore, a French writer had died recently, and the tabloid press printed that Pamela had been with him before he passed away – we will get the revelations near the end - https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/games-people-play-by-eric-berne.html

On the political side, we had been aware of the penchant for Stalinists, and with their demise, when Stalin is history, Khruschev started to expose the many abominations that had been ordered by the late dictator, and Widmerpool is accused of spying, he has a ludicrous appearance in the atelier of a painter in Venice

 

Meanwhile, Pamela wants a meeting with Russell Gwinnett in a basilica, and she grabs him by the…testicles, and later, while he stays with a family in London, the grandfather meets with her in the nude (Lady Widmerpool is naked) while she was presumably attempting to have coitus with the target of her attentions…

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