Cyril Connolly: A Life

"Astonishingly precocious in his youth, Cyril Connolly was haunted for the rest of his life by an acute sense of failure and romantic yearning. His two greatest books, The Unquiet Grave and Enemies of Promise, are classics of English prose, combining wit, romanticism, and merciless self-knowledge. He was an essayist and parodist of genius, a superb literary journalist, and nurturer of some of the finest writers of his time. As witty in person as he was in his prose, he was also notoriously slothful and greedy; married three times, his dealings with women were bedeviled by a lifelong tendency to be in love with two or more at once. Jeremy Lewis is the ideal biographer of Connolly; sympathetic to his doubts and failings, celebratory of his achievements, delighted by his humor and love of gossip. His book will be the definitively illuminating portrait of the man and of the literary era in which he played such a key role.

'There'll be no muted enthusiasm here - this is the most entertaining literary biography in years. And probably the funniest .. Connolly possessed a remarkable flair for friendship, and somehow somebody was always around to pick up the tab, whether at an expensive restaurant or a last stay in hospital. 'Cyril,' groused one loyal aristocratic chum, 'is dying beyond my means.'"" - Michael Dirda, The Washington Post

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