Cyril Connolly: The Life and Times of England's Most Controversial Literary Critic

Influential English literary critic Cyril Connolly (1903-1974) is best known for his wartime reflections, The Unquiet Grave (1944), an angst-ridden quest for artistic integrity in a world gone mad. That book's eloquent pessimism about marriage, art, happiness, its self-pity and hedonism, were salient features in Connolly's personal life, observes British author Fisher, a biographer of Noel Coward. This stylish, disarming biography gets beneath Connolly's persona as snobbish, worldly-wise hedonist to reveal a man tormented by self-reproach and self-doubt, beset by a sense of failure despite the success of his magazine Horizon. Fisher dazzlingly portrays Connolly's stellar circle, which included Evelyn Waugh, W.H. Auden, George Orwell, Anthony Powell, Sylvia Beach, Stephen Spender and Arthur Koestler. He discusses Connolly's three stormy marriages and his encounters with Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Ian Fleming. This spirited biography will send readers to Connolly's self-portraits, The Unquiet Grave and Enemies of Promise (1938), and to his 1936 novel The Rock Pool. Photos. (Jan.)