Nicholas Birns provides a fresh examination of the British writer's career and growing reputation in this introduction to his work. Birns takes a global view of

A social comedy about "a company of giddyheads" and their wanderings in London's Bohemia.

'A landmark biography' The Times, Books of the Year The long-awaited portrait of a literary master from one of our generation's greatest biographers Anthony Pow

'He is, as Proust was before him, the great literary chronicler of his culture in his time.' GUARDIAN 'A Dance to the Music of Time' is universally acknowledged