Cyril Connolly  

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Cyril Vernon Connolly (10 September 1903 – 26 November 1974) was an English literary critic and writer. He was the editor of the influential literary magazine Horizon (1940–49) and wrote Enemies of Promise (1938), which combined literary criticism with an autobiographical exploration of why he failed to become the successful author of fiction that he had aspired to be in his youth.

References in popular culture

• Cyril Connolly's name appears in a coda to the Monty Python song "Eric the Half-a-Bee", as a mishearing of the words "semi-carnally". Despite being corrected, the backing vocalists then sing "Cyril Connolly" to the melody of the song. The same comedians made another reference to Connolly in The Brand New Monty Python Bok, which includes a facsimile Penguin paperback, Norman Henderson's Diary, complete with (invented) praise from Connolly.
• The critic and publisher Everard Spruce in Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour trilogy is a satire of Connolly.
• Ed Spain, "the Captain" in Nancy Mitford's 1951 novel The Blessing is a satire of Connolly.
• Michael Nelson's novel A Room in Chelsea Square (1958) is a thinly disguised homosexualised account about Connolly's time editing Horizon.
• Elaine Dundy's novel The Old Man and Me (1964) is based on her affair with Connolly.
• A film producer in Julian MacLaren-Ross's 1964 thriller My Name is Love is based on Connolly. MacLaren-Ross repeated many of the descriptions verbatim in his later memoir of Connolly.
• Connolly is quoted as saying "Better to write for yourself and have no public than to write for the public and have no self" in Season 5, Episode 7 of Criminal Minds.
• Since the film A Business Affair (1994) is adapted from Barbara Skelton's memoirs of her marriage to Cyril Connolly, Jonathan Pryce's character Alec Bolton in the film is based on Cyril Connolly
• Connolly is also fictionalised in Ian McEwan's novel Atonement. The principal character, eighteen-year-old Briony Tallis, sends the draft of a novella she has written to Horizon magazine and Cyril Connolly is shown as replying at length as to why the novella had to be rejected, apart from explaining to Briony her strong and weak points and also mentioning Elizabeth Bowen.
• Michael Lewis's book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game cites Connolly at the top of the first chapter – "Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising." (Enemies of Promise)
• Donna Tartt's novel The Secret History references Cyril Connolly in Chapter 5-"...Cyril Connolly, who was notorious for being a hard guest to please...".
• In William Boyd's James Bond novel Solo Bond recalls Connolly's description of Chelsea as "that tranquil cultivated spielraum... where I worked and wandered" (Connolly, Boyd and the fictional Bond all lived in Chelsea), although Bond can not remember the author of the quote.
• In An Englishman Abroad (1983) by Alan Bennett, Guy Burgess keeps asking Coral Browne "How is Cyril Connolly?"
• In Solomon Gursky Was Here (1989) by Mordecai Richler, Moses Berger, sorting his books as an excuse for not writing, finds his copy of The Unquiet Grave and reads "...the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece..." Muttering an imprecation, he throws the book across the room, but immediately retrieves it because of his regard for Connolly.

Works

• The Rock Pool, 1935 (novel)
• Enemies of Promise, 1938
• The Unquiet Grave, 1944
• The Condemned Playground, 1945 (collection)
• The Missing Diplomats, 1952
• The Golden Horizon, 1953 (editor; compilation from Horizon)
• Ideas and Places, 1953 (collection)
• Les Pavillons: French Pavilions of the Eighteenth Century, 1962 (with Jerome Zerbe)
• Previous Convictions, 1963 (collection)
• The Modern Movement: 100 Key Books From England, France, and America, 1880–1950, 1965
• The Evening Colonnade 1973 (collection)
• A Romantic Friendship, 1975 (letters to Noel Blakiston)
• Cyril Connolly: Journal and Memoir, 1983 (edited by D. Pryce-Jones)
• The Selected Essays of Cyril Connolly, 1984 (edited by Peter Quennell)
• Shade Those Laurels, 1990 (fiction, completed by Peter Levi)
• The Selected Works of Cyril Connolly, 2002 (edited by Matthew Connolly), Volume One: The Modern Movement; Volume Two: The Two Natures