Temporary kings

The eleventh novel in Anthony Powell's brilliant twelve-novel sequence, A Dance to the Music of Time.Around 1958, a decade on from the preceding novel, Books Do Furnish a Room, Jenkins attends an international literary conference in Venice, where the death is announced of French author Ferrand-Sénéschal. Dr Emily Brightman introduces Jenkins to Russell Gwinnett, a prospective biographer of X Trapnel with a faintly alarming manner. Gwinnett naturally wishes to meet Pamela Widmerpool, and he produces a press report linking her with Ferrand-Sénéschal's death...