A British novelist and literary and social critic, Cyril Connolly (1903-1974) is best known for two works which combine criticism with autobiography, Enemies of Promise (1938) and The Unquiet Grave (1944).

Cyril (Vernon) Connolly was born on September 10, 1903, in Coventry, England, to Matthew and Muriel (Vernon) Connolly and died in London on November 25, 1974. The father, an army major, was an eccentric, according to critic Peter Quennell, who had known Connolly since their school days, and the mother, judging by Connolly's own account of her, was a rather restless person for whose love the son yearned in vain. Whether she might actually have loved him more is less important than the fact that he perceived that she might have and that he felt this yearning in later years. Eventually the parents separated.

Shortly after the author's death Quennell, in describing Connolly in their days together at Balliol College, Oxford, called him...