London: George Routledge & Sons Ltd. (1938). First edition of Connolly's superb collection of essays on politics and literature, including his famous memoir of public school called "A Georgian Boyhood". Presentation copy, inscribed on the front free endpaper to Humphrey Hare, Connolly's traveling companion to the South of France in 1939, with a transcription of a quotation from his chapter on the dangers of politics describing the signs that a writer has gone over to the other (communist) side; "the writer shows an inability: '…to be polite to young men with bowlers, rolled umbrellas, or Mayfair men moustaches…' To Humphrey Hare, who needs none of this advice, Cyril Connolly, Cassis, 1939". Connolly "traveled down to the South of France in April with the writer Humphrey Hare, and from Cassis he wrote (signing off as 'M. Connolly, Major') to say he was down to his last twenty francs, and was being persecuted by restaurant- and hotel-owners waving unpaid bills; to make matters worse, his car had broken down, and he urgently needed £50 to get it repaired and pay off his debts…. Cassis was empty apart from 'a platoon of lesbians, with a grey-haired commander'; Connolly found himself playing endless games of chess, while the political situation left him feeling 'very pacifist and Trotskyite.'" - Jeremy Lewis, Cyril Connolly, p. 318. A wonderful book, whose title essay is suffused with the lyrical foreboding that was more fully realized later in Connolly's The Unquiet Grave: "This is the time of year when wars break out, and a piece of glass betrays the woodland to the vindictive sun. 8vo, original navy blue cloth. Endpapers lightly foxed, some soiling to text, but a very good copy of a title seldom found inscribed. Sadly lacking the dust jacket.