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Connolly, Cyril

The Unquiet Grave, [4] 78; Enemies of Promise, [39] 18

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20041201145359 Anthony Perry on Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave - Slightly Foxed Issue 4

A Tuft of a Masterpiece

Anthony Perry on Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave

The term ‘masterpiece’ is often used lazily as a bit of instant praise, but the dictionary definition is actually ‘a production surpassing in excellence all others by the same hand’. So, strictly, you can only produce one masterpiece. Cyril Connolly (1903-1974) may have had this on his mind when he began his book The Unquiet Grave: ‘The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and no other task is of any consequence.’ He, alas, never produced a major work to earn the distinction himself, and he will mainly be remembered as the founder (with Stephen Spender) of the literary magazine Horizon and as the principal book reviewer of the Sunday Times in the period after the Second World War.
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The Charlock’s Shade

John Walsh on Cyril Connolly, Enemies of Promise

Cyril Connolly is the patron saint of literary under-achievers. For all young English graduates who ever believed they had a novel in them but didn’t; every journalist with an edgy work-in-progress hidden in the bottom drawer of his desk; every would-be McEwan or Mantel who has spent frustrated years subbing other people’s words on the Wythenshawe Gazette, Connolly is the figure to whom they cleave for comfort. Because if ever a man had an obvious talent to write it was he.

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