49 Facts About Cyril Connolly

Cyril Vernon Connolly CBE was an English literary critic and writer.

Cyril Connolly was the editor of the influential literary magazine Horizon and wrote Enemies of Promise, 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.

Cyril Connolly's parents had met while his father was serving in Ireland, and his father's next posting was to South Africa.

Cyril Connolly was educated at St Cyprian's School, Eastbourne, where he enjoyed the company of George Orwell and Cecil Beaton.

Cyril Connolly was a favourite of the formidable headmistress Mrs Wilkes but was later to criticise the "character-building" ethos of the school.

Cyril Connolly then won a scholarship to Eton, a year after Orwell.

Cyril Connolly won over his early tormentor Godfrey Meynell and became a popular wit.

At Eton, Cyril Connolly was involved in romantic intrigues and school politics, which he described in Enemies of Promise.

Cyril Connolly established a reputation as an intellectual and earned the respect of Dadie Rylands and Denis King-Farlow.

In 1922, Cyril Connolly achieved academic success winning the Rosebery History Prize, and followed by the Brackenbury History scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford.

Cyril Connolly established rapport with Brian Howard, but, he concluded, "moral cowardice and academic outlook debarred him from making friends with Harold Acton, Oliver Messel, Robert Byron, Henry Green and Anthony Powell".

Cyril Connolly was for years afterwards nostalgic about his time at Eton.

Cyril Connolly undertook a tour of Germany, Austria and Hungary before starting at Oxford University.

Cyril Connolly spent Christmas with his parents in a rare get-together at the Lock House in Hampshire and at the beginning of 1925, he went with the college group to Minehead with Urquhart.

Cyril Connolly left Balliol in 1925 with a third class degree in history.

Cyril Connolly struggled to find employment, while his friends and family sought to pay off his extensive debts.

Cyril Connolly obtained a post tutoring a boy in Jamaica and set sail for the Caribbean in November 1925.

Cyril Connolly returned to England in April 1926 on a banana boat in the company of Alwyn Williams, headmaster of Winchester College.

Cyril Connolly enrolled as a special constable in the General Strike, but it was over before he was actively involved.

Cyril Connolly responded to an advertisement to work as a secretary for Montague Summers but was warned off by his friends.

MacCarthy invited Cyril Connolly to write book reviews for the New Statesman.

Cyril Connolly departed for Sicily then returned to England via Vienna, Prague and Dresden.

Cyril Connolly's first signed work in the New Statesman, a review of Laurence Sterne, appeared in June 1927.

Cyril Connolly was working on various works that never saw the light of day: a novel Green Endings, a travel book on Spain, his diary and A Partial Guide to the Balkans.

Cyril Connolly approached Cecil Beaton to draw the cover design for the last and he received an advance for the work although it was eventually lost.

Cyril Connolly then made a more positive romantic approach to Racy Fisher, one of a pair of nieces of Desmond MacCarthy's wife, Molly.

Cyril Connolly went on to Italy, where he stayed with Berenson and Mrs Keppel where he was taken with her daughter Violet Trefusis.

Jebb and Cyril Connolly stayed with Harold Nicolson in the company of Ivor Novello and Christopher Sykes and then made a tour of Germany.

Cyril Connolly travelled separately to Villefranche and spent five weeks in Barcelona with Longden before returning to London.

Cyril Connolly spent Christmas at Sledmere with the Sykes family.

At the beginning of 1929, Cyril Connolly went briefly to Paris and just before returning to London, he met Jean Bakewell and stayed an extra night to get to know her.

Cyril Connolly met James Joyce about whom he wrote The Position of Joyce which appeared in Life and Letters.

Cyril Connolly then went to Berlin to stay with Nicolson until the latter managed to remove him as "not perhaps the ideal guest".

Cyril Connolly was approached by John Betjeman of the Architectural Review to act as an art critic.

In February 1933, Cyril Connolly took Jean to Greece to recover, where they met Brian Howard.

Cyril Connolly met Dylan Thomas at a party and early in 1935 invited him in the company of Anthony Powell, Waugh, Robert Byron and Desmond and Mollie McCarthy.

In Paris, Cyril Connolly spent some time with Jack Kahane, the avant garde publisher, and Henry Miller, with whom he established a strong rapport after an initial unsuccessful meeting.

In 1934, Cyril Connolly was working on a trilogy: Humane Killer, The English Malady and The Rock Pool.

Cyril Connolly's only novel, The Rock Pool, is a satirical work describing a covey of dissolute drifters at an end of season French seaside resort, which was based on his experiences in the south of France.

Faber and Faber was one of the publishers that rejected it and so Cyril Connolly took it to Jack Kahane, who published it in Paris in 1936.

Cyril Connolly followed it up with a book of non-fiction, Enemies of Promise, the second half of which is autobiographical.

In 1940, Cyril Connolly founded the influential literary magazine Horizon, with Peter Watson, its financial backer and de facto art editor.

Cyril Connolly edited Horizon until 1950, with Stephen Spender as an uncredited associate editor until early 1941.

Cyril Connolly was briefly the literary editor for The Observer until a disagreement with David Astor.

In 1962, Cyril Connolly wrote Bond Strikes Camp, a spoof account of Ian Fleming's character engaged in heroic escapades of dubious propriety as suggested by the title and written with Fleming's support.

Cyril Connolly had previously collaborated with Fleming in 1952 in writing an account of the Cambridge Spies Guy Burgess and Donald MacLean entitled The Missing Diplomats, an early publication for Fleming's Queen Anne Press.

Cyril Connolly later became the wife of Laurence Vail but, following years of health problems, she died of a stroke while on a trip to Paris at the age of 39.

In 1967, Cyril Connolly settled in Eastbourne, to the amusement of Beaton, who suggested he was lured back by the cakes they had enjoyed in school outings to the town.

Cyril Connolly died suddenly on 26 November 1974, having continued to the end as a Sunday Times journalist, and was buried in Berwick churchyard, Sussex.