A Romantic Friendship: The Letters Of Cyril Connolly To Noel Blakiston

by Cyril Connolly

356 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Cyril Connolly was born in Coventry, Warwickshire in 1903. Educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford he was a regular contributor to the New Statesman in the 1930s.

Connolly also co-edited Horizon (1939-41) with Stephen Spender and later was literary editor of the The Observer. Books by Connolly include the novel, The Rock Pool (1938), the autobiographical, Enemies of Promise (1938) and The Unquiet Grave (1944), a collection of aphorisms, reflections and essays.

After the Second World War Connolly was the principal book reviewer of the Sunday Times. He also published several other books including The Condemned Playground (1945), Previous Convictions (1963) and the Modern Movement (1965). Cyril Connolly died in 1974.

Reviews

[C. B. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Blakiston met Connolly at Eton, and they kept in contact after they had both left for Cambridge and Oxford, respectively. These letters are a testament to that time, and date mainly from the second half of the 1920s. Many of them discuss intellectual anxieties; others, mutual love. Through many of them, Connolly travels and creates Miltonian lists of places he has visited or wants to visit. I only wish I could see some of Blakiston's responses, as this is interesting to me chiefly for what it says about romantic friendship at this time (and among elite men like Blakiston and Connolly). Beyond this interest, it is a bit dull and often shows Connolly at his must unlikeable — chaotically clingy, misogynist, and racist (this last one arising when he takes up a tutoring job for a wealthy family in Jamaica). This is a book for those seriously interested in Connolly, or these historical subjects.