The Unquiet Grave – A Word Cycle. By Palinurus.
London: Horizon, 1944. First edition, hardcover issue, one of 500 copies printed on Barcham Green handmade paper by the Curwen Press. Of the 1000 sets of sheets printed, 500 were reportedly bound in cloth and 500 were bound in wrappers. Presentation copy, inscribed by Connolly to his friend Tom Driberg on the front free endpaper: "Tom with much love / from Cyril – " Tom Driberg, later ennobled as Baron Bradwell of Bradwell, a poet in his youth, a journalist (author of “The Talk of London” column under the pseudonym of “William Hickey” in the Daily Express), a member of the British Communist Party and later long-standing Labour MP (and Chairman of the Labour Party), the author of a sympathetic account of Guy Burgess and a suspected spy, a promiscuous homosexual and High Church Anglican, Driberg is the subject of a biography by Francis Wheen entitled The Soul of Indiscretion: Tom Driberg, Poet, Philanderer, Legislator and Outlaw – His Life and Indiscretions. One of the most civilized, and civilizing, of modern books, The Unquiet Grave is a compilation of the “doubts and reflections of a year” on “art, love, nature and religion.” Begun in 1940, “The Unquiet Grave,” as Connolly..... More