Talk:Cyril Connolly

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Untitled[edit]

I feel there should be a note pertaining to the reference to him in Monty Python's Eric The Half A Bee song. I'd be willing to bet more people know his name from that than anywhere else.

Well wasn't he Private Eye's first "greatest living Englishman"? Also the fat man/thin man quote, though that was stolen from Orwell--212.183.134.64 09:37, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

- As several people have mentioned the Python song (both on this page and in previous edits of the article) I've added a section to cover it, and linked to Connolly from the song's page too. The "fat man" quote is on the Wikiquote page at the moment; it could also be included on the page for The Unquiet Grave when that happens. Mvconnolly 16:16, 18 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Cyril Connolly: "It is closing time in the gardens of the West"[edit]

Several internet pages claim that Cyril Connolly made the remark quoted in the subject line above "in the last issue of Horizon" which would have been in 1950, at least by this wiki entry.

But a 2005 article by Richard Rorty in a 2005 issue of Dissent see http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=191 has him making the remark "just before the Second World War." Another page holds that Connolly wrote it in "The Unquiet Grave." I have this book but not at my country place where I am writing this. Does anyone know which attribution, is any, is correct? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.250.133.23 (talk) 03:30, 6 February 2007 (UTC).[reply]

- According to the biography of Connolly by Lewis, it is from the closing sentences of the last editorial "Comment" he wrote for Horizon.KD Tries Again 18:27, 31 May 2007 (UTC)KD[reply]

Connoly or Connolly?[edit]

I was looking for this specifically because the "Eric The Half A Bee" song names him, but I had no idea of the spelling. I first tried Cyril Connoly and there was no Wiki page, not even a redirect to here. I then tried Google and got several hits. Most notably Amazon dot com had that name appearing in several book excerpts. I looked and they have scans of the pages and the name is spelled Connoly in the original published documents. Most often quoting "Life and Letters" by Cyril Connoly, but there are also some quotes to works here credited to Connolly.

Are Connoly and Connolly different authors or is Connoly just a common misspelling?
Is "Life and Letters" missing from Connolly's biblio or is that the name of an essay included in a collection?

64.252.98.178 20:59, 27 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The name is widely misspelled online, but it's just Cyril Connolly. Life and Letters was a journal edited by Connolly's friend Desmond MacCarthy, and Connolly was a contributor - the journal itself shouldn't therefore appear in Connolly's bibliography, although there could be no objection to people listing any articles by Connolly published in the journal. The journal is cited, rightly, in the Wiki article on MacCarthy.KD Tries Again 14:57, 28 June 2007 (UTC)KD[reply]

Unreferenced text[edit]

Have removed the following pending adequate referencing:

In Ian McEwan's award-winning novel "Atonement" (2001) the protagonist Briony Tallis, a budding novelist, submits to Connolly at Horizon her first novelette. The book includes his long rejection letter (fictional, but closely modeled on his actual writings) in which he tries to soften the blow of being rejected, offers some perceptive criticism and encourages Tallis to do better - which she does, as shown in the book's later part where she becomes a successful and well-known novelist, and is shown to have taken to heart some of Connolly's advice.

In April 2007 the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography marked the twentieth anniversary of The Simpsons in its online newsletter, with approximations for the Simpson family from its list of subjects: Cyril Connolly was selected as the equivalent of Homer Simpson, being judged "a man who, like Homer, never wrote a great novel; whose genius, like Homer's, lay in failure; a man notable for his 'greed, his sloth, his gourmandizing, his inconsistency and melancholy'".(ref Subscription-only link, and this text, preserved at OUP Blog</ref)

In An Englishman Abroad (1983) BBC TV bio-movie, spy Guy Burgess asks visiting actress Coral Browne for news and gossip from England. Twice he asks about Cyril Connolly and twice she says she does not know him.

The inline citation above is to a subscription-only site - a Wikipedia no-no. Technopat (talk) 14:17, 23 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

School[edit]

He was a favourite of the formidable Mrs Wilkes.

Who? Valetude (talk) 17:57, 29 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]