The twelve-volume cycle "A Dance to the Music of Time" – often compared to Marcel Proust's "In Search of Lost Time" due to its content and formal design – is regarded as the main work of British writer Anthony Powell and is one of the most significant novel works of the 20th century. Inspired by the painting of the same name by the French Baroque painter Nicolas Poussin, the cycle presents a multifaceted picture of the English upper class from the end of World War I to the late 1960s. From the perspective of the first-person narrator Jenkins, who embodies typical British humor and understatement and bears several biographical parallels to Powell's alter ego, the "Dance" offers a wealth of characters, events, observations, and memories that provide a unique and insightful glimpse.