Anthony Powell earned a reputation as a literary giant within the generation of Waugh, Orwell and Greene, best known for his twelve-volume work A Dance to the Music of Time.

These memoirs reveal Powell - the man and author - providing an insider's view of the British literary scene and social elite from the 1920s to the 1980s. In these pages, Powell observes the obscenity trial sparked by Lady Chatterley's Lover, and Shirley Temple's libel suit after Graham Greene reviewed Wee Willie Winkie with 'more than his usual verve'. Throughout, Powell paints vivid, witty and superbly written portraits of his contemporaries, other authors including Kingsley Amis, V.S. Naipaul, T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf.

Featuring an illuminating new introduction by Louisa Young, TO KEEP THE BALL ROLLING is the abridged version of Anthony Powell's four volumes of memoir, first published between 1976 and 1982.