(August 26, 1904 – January 4, 1986) was an Anglo-American novelist. Born at Wyberslegh Hall, High Lane, Cheshire in the North West England, Isherwood spent his childhood in various towns where his father, a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Brithish Army, was stationed. After his father was killed in the First World War, he settled with his mother in London and at Wyberslegh. Isherwood attended preparatory school St. Edmund’s, Surrey, where he first met W. H. Auden. At Repton School he met his lifelong friend Edward Upward, with whom he wrote the extravagant “Mortmere” stories, only one of which was published during his lifetime (a few others appeared after his death, and others sere summarised in his “Lions and Shadows”). He deliberately failed his tripos and left Corpus Christi College, Cambridge without a degree in 1925. For the next few years he lived with violinish Andr’e Mangeot, working as secretary to Mangeot’s string quartet and studying medicine; during this time he wrote a book of nonsense poems, “People One Ought to Know” (published 1982), with illustrations by Mangeot’s eleven-year-old son, Sylvain. In 1925 he was reintroduced to W. H. Auden, and became Auden’s literary mentor and partner in an intermittent, casual liaison, as Auden sent his poems to Isherwood for comment and approval. Through Auden, Isherwood met Stephen Spender, with whom he later spent much time in Germany. His first novel, “All the Conspirators”, appeared in 1928; it is an anti-heroic story, written in a pastiche of many modernist novelists, about a young man who is defeated by his mother. In 1928-29 Isherwood studied medicine at King’s College London, but gave it up after six months to join Auden for a few weeks in Berlin. Rejecting his upper-class background and attracted to males, he remained in Berlin, the capital of the young Weimar Republic, drawn by its reputation for sexual freedom. There, he “fully indulged his taste for pretty youths. He went to Berlin in search of boys and found one called Heinz, who became his first great love.” Isherwood commented on the Berlin sex underground, and his own participation in it, in a note to the American publisher of John Henry Mackay’s “Der Puppenjunge (The Hustler)”, “a classic boy-love novel set in the contemporary milieu of boy prostitutes in Berlin.” “It gives a picture of the Berlin sexual underworld early in this century,” wrote Isherwood, “which I know, from my own experience, to be authentic.” In 1931 he met Jean Ross, the inspiration for his fictional character Sally Bowles; he also met Gerald Hamilton, the inspiration for the fictional Mr. Norris. In September 1931 the poet William Plomer introduced him to E. M. Forster; they became close and Forster served as a mentor to the young writer. Isherwood’s second novel, “The Memorial” (1932), was another of his stories of conflict between mother and son, based closely on his own family history. During one of his returns to London he worked with the director Berthold Viertel on the film “Little Friend”, an experience that became the basis of his novel “Prater Violet” (1945). He worked as a private tutor in Berlin and elsewhere while writing the novel “Mr. Norris Changes Trains” (1935) and a series of short stories collected under the title “Goodbye to Berlin” (1939). These provided the inspiration for the play “I Am a Camera”, the subsequent musical “Cabaret” and the film of the same name. A memorial plaque to Isherwood has been erected on the house in Schoneberg, Berlin, where he lived. During these years he moved around Europe, living in Copenhagen, Sintra and elsewhere, and collaborated on three plays with Auden, “The Dog Beneath the Skin” (1935), “The Ascent of F6″ (1936), and “On the Frontier” (1939). Isherwood wrote a lightly fictionalized autobiographical account of his childhood and youth, “Lions and Shadows” (1938), using the title of an abandoned novel. Auden and Isherwood travelled to China in 1938 to gather material for their book on the Sino-Japanese War called “Journey to a War” (1939). In the opinion of many reveiwers, Isherwood’s finest achievement was his 1964 novel “A Single Man”. On Valentine’s Day 1953, at the age of 48, he met teen-aged Don Bachardy among a group of friends on the beach at Santa Monica. Although one can find Bachardy’s age at the time variously reported, in the biographical film “Chris & Don: A Love Story”, Bachardy himself recalls that, “at the time I was, probably, 16.” Despite the age difference, this meeting began a partnership that, though interrupted by affairs and separations, continued until the end of Isherwood’s life. The more than 30-year age difference between Isherwood and Bachardy raised eyebrows at the time, but the two became a well-known and well-established couple in Southern Californian society, with many Hollywood friends. Isherwood and Bachardy lived together in Santa Monica for the rest of Isherwood’s life. 04-07-10 Began reading “A Single Man” for the Los Angeles LGBT book reading group that I belong to.

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