Clever Hearts: Desmond and Molly MacCarthy: A Biography

Desmond MacCarthy (1877-1952) literary critic for the London Sunday Times in the 1930s and '40s, married Molly Warre-Cornish, a cousin of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell, in 1906. Historian Hugh Cecil, their grandson, and his wife, Mirabel ( Heroines in Love ), propose the MacCarthys as literary lovers, although the romance of that portrait is not borne out in this biography. An account of Desmond's career would have sustained considerable interest in itself. In an era when theater was as important as television is today, he was an influential drama critic. The Cecils' account scants this material in favor of a chronicle of who was related to and/or slept with whom in Merry Olde England between the world wars. (Dec.)