William Neil Connor Bio/Wiki, Net Worth, Married 2018
Sir William Neil Connor (26 April 1909 – 6 April 1967) was an English journalist for The Daily Mirror who wrote under the pseudonym of "Cassandra".He wrote a regular column for over 30 years between 1935 and 1 February 1967 with a short intermission for World War II, his column restarting after the war with the words "As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, it is a powerful hard thing to please all of the people all of the time." He took his pen-name from Cassandra in Greek mythology, a tragic character that is given the gift of prophecy by Apollo but is then cursed so that no one will ever believe her.His columns were simply written, in keeping with his working class readership and comprised slices of human life, including famous people, events and later a personal diary of his every-day life and thoughts - though at times he could be controversial. He worked alongside cartoonist Philip Zec at the Daily Mirror and the pair courted controversy in 1942 with an illustration, captioned by Connor, which Winston Churchill and others perceived as an attack on government. Churchill complained to Cecil King, then a director of the company, of a writer (Connor) being "dominated by malevolence". Connor forgave Churchill though, and later wrote a moving obituary of the wartime Prime Minister ("Sword in the Scabbard," 25 January 1965) and attended his funeral service at St. Paul's Cathedral.In his best known columns, Connor claimed that P. G. Wodehouse was a Nazi collaborator, a charge from which George Orwell defended Wodehouse, and defamed, by virtually outing, the entertainer Liberace during his British tour in 1956. The paper was sued in 1959 and lost; the court case involved both sides lying under oath.According to Roy Greenslade, Connor was "an odd mix of liberal and reactionary", citing for the former his column attacking the enactment of the death sentence delivered to Ruth Ellis due on the day of its publication. He wrote: "The one thing that brings stature and dignity to mankind and raises us above the beasts will have been denied her - pity and the hope of ultimate redemption."In the years leading up to his death Connor wrote more humorous columns and was regarded with affection by Mirror readers. Subjects ranged from the time he received wrong number calls intended for the local railway parcels service, to the mysterious person who sent him a fresh goose egg once a year.Connor was knighted in 1966. His final column ended with the words "Normal service in this column is temporarily interrupted while I learn to do what any babe can do with ease and what comes naturally to most men of good conscience - to sleep easily o' nights."Since his death the column Cassandra in The Daily Mirror has continued to be sporadically published. A new columnist, writer Keith Waterhouse, took over Connor's place in the newspaper, but not his byline.
Wrote a controversial commentary on British life in the Daily Mirror newspaper under the name "Cassandra" from 1935-1967. He was once sued by Liberace for insinuating he was homosexual.
$200,000