An engrossing new biography of the man whose writings about 1930s Berlin made him famous. From
the editor of Isherwood's diaries and letters. Christopher Isherwood rejected the life he was
born to and set out to make a different one. Heir to an English estate he flunked out of
university moved to Berlin was driven through Europe by the Nazis and circled the globe
before finally settling in Hollywood. There he adopted a new religion and continued to form the
friendships - including an astounding number of romantic and sexual ones often with other
celebrated artists - through which he discovered himself. Isherwood repeatedly fictionalised
his friends and himself - from the detached 'Christopher Isherwood' of Goodbye to Berlin to
George the unapologetic middle-aged lover of men in A Single Man and the boldly out
narrator of Christopher and His Kind . He was determined to portray his milieu appealingly to
mainstream audiences in lucid entertaining often hilarious prose. Frankness about his
sexuality political beliefs and religion made him both a figurehead for the left and a target
for the right. All the while among the many public constructed selves an inmost self
remained hidden. Using a wealth of unpublished material Christopher Isherwood Inside Out
reveals the drama and complexity of Isherwood's interior world. It tells how the traumas of his
father's death in World War I and his failure to protect his German lover from the Nazis were
healed by his life as a monk in the 1940s enabling him to commit unflinchingly to a sexually
open relationship in the 1950s and to come out as a 'grand old man' of the gay rights movement
in the 1970s. With this new biography enriched by unlimited access to Isherwood's partner Don
Bachardy Katherine Bucknell shows how Christopher Isherwood achieved a uniquely inspiring
personal life. He effected lasting change in our culture through both his literary works and
the way he lived.
