Military Philosophers (Isis (Hardcover Large Print))

Set mostly in London with a brief interlude overseas, it is the period 1941-1945. Nicholas Jenkins has been posted to a War Office liaison Section to work for the Allied forces. Absurdities coincide with horrors for the characters of A Dance to the Music of Time, especially in the shady secret services; and although the violence is off-stage, it is still catastrophic. Jenkins's friend and colleague, David Pennistone, talks in philosophic terms while making the best of being a soldier; the dazzling array of individual foreign officers encountered adapt themselves to life in exile, while the eminent figures of Finn, Farebrother -- and, naturally, Widmerpool -- have different ideas of how War should be waged.