This work investigates the complex interplay between the public literary persona and the private, often self-sabotaging life of the influential British critic Cyril Connolly. David Pryce-Jones, a contemporary and associate of Connolly, utilizes personal correspondence, unpublished journals, and extensive interviews to construct a portrait of a man defined by his unfulfilled potential and his role as a central figure in 20th-century English letters. The narrative examines how Connolly's aesthetic sensibilities and personal insecurities shaped his career as the editor of Horizon and his enduring, if controversial, legacy.

The text provides a candid, insider perspective on the life of a man who was as much a product of his social milieu as he was a shaper of it. The biographical approach is marked by a clinical detachment that allows the subject's own writings to reveal the contradictions inherent in his character.