''Temporary Kings'' is a novel by

Anthony Powell Anthony Dymoke Powell ( ; 21 December 1905 – 28 March 2000) was an English novelist best known for his 12-volume work '' A Dance to the Music of Time'', published between 1951 and 1975. It is on the list of longest novels in English. Powell ...

, the penultimate in his twelve-volume novel, ''

A Dance to the Music of Time ''A Dance to the Music of Time'' is a 12-volume ''Book series#History, roman-fleuve'' by English writer Anthony Powell, published between 1951 and 1975 to critical acclaim. The story is an often comic examination of movements and manners, power ...

''. It was published in 1973 by Heinemann and remains in print as does the rest of the sequence. It takes place at a fictional 1958 symposium in Venice. ''Temporary Kings'' has been characterized as a novel in the post-war consensus of literary compromise. It also demonstrates Powell's evocation of art at all levels, most notably an (imaginary) Venetian ceiling painting by

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo Giovanni Battista Tiepolo ( , ; 5 March 1696 – 27 March 1770), also known as Giambattista (or Gianbattista) Tiepolo, was an Italian painter and printmaker from the Republic of Venice who painted in the Rococo style, considered an import ...

''Temporary Kings'' received the W. H. Smith Prize in 1974. It is dedicated to Roland Gant, Powell's editor, who Powell called "one in a million."

Critical reception

In its review of ''Temporary Kings'' in 1973, ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...

'' said the book was an improvement on the previous installment, '' Books Do Furnish a Room'', which it said 'showed a certain staleness'. It added: "With 11 out of the 12 books in the series now before us, it is possible to speak fairly confidently of the work as a whole. In spite of that air of being our English Proust which has sometimes grated on those who like the French one, Mr Powell is unlikely to imitate the obsessional heightening in late Proust, nor to spring a redemption on us. His nature is to be uniform: there is hardly a ragged edge or an un-calculated incongruity anywhere in this urbane discourse, where the catastrophes are never witnessed, only inferred from scenes in themselves comic. If the new characters have not quite the flavour of the earlier Gileses and Jeavonses, and the range of the social panorama now appears less than it once seemed, the flow of reappearances and transformations is powerful enough to carry the series through that 'Dance to the Music of Time' whose discipline and formal rhythm do recall Poussin, the artist its title invokes: except that it is a great deal more fun."''The Times'', "Temporary Kings by Anthony Powell", accessed on May 19, 2020
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References

{{A Dance to the Music of Time 1973 British novels Novels by Anthony Powell A Dance to the Music of Time Fiction set in 1958 Fiction set in 1959 Heinemann (publisher) books