Editing Desmond MacCarthy (section)

==Career==
A member of the [[Bloomsbury Group]], MacCarthy also had a wider circle of friends, including [[Logan Pearsall Smith]].{{citation needed|date=April 2015}}

In 1903 he became a [[journalist]], with moderate success.

For part of the [[World War I|First World War]] he worked in Naval Intelligence.

In 1917 he joined the ''[[New Statesman]]'' as a drama critic, and in 1920 became its literary editor. He wrote a weekly column under the pen-name "The Affable Hawk". During this time he recruited [[Cyril Connolly]] to the paper.

By 1928 he was losing interest in the ''New Statesman'', and became the first editor of ''[[Life and Letters]]''.<ref name ="Lewis">Jeremy Lewis ''Cyril Connolly: A Life'' Jonathan Cape 1997</ref>  Other periodicals he was associated with were ''New Quarterly'' and ''Eye Witness''. MacCarthy became a literary critic for the ''[[The Sunday Times (UK)|Sunday Times]]'', and several volumes of his collected criticism were published.

He was the author of the short ghost story "Pargiton and Harby", reprinted in the ''Fourth Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories''.

He was knighted in the 1951 New Year's Honours.{{cn|date=August 2020}}