Christopher Isherwood
Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood (26 August 1904 – 4 January 1986) was an Anglo-American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, autobiographer, and diarist.[1][2][3] His best-known works include Goodbye to Berlin (1939), a semi-autobiographical novel which inspired the musical Cabaret (1966); A Single Man (1964), adapted as a film by Tom Ford in 2009; and Christopher and His Kind (1976), a memoir which "carried him into the heart of the Gay Liberation movement".[4]
Christopher Isherwood
4 January 1986 (aged 81)
Santa Monica, California, U.S.
Novelist
Modernism, realism
Heinz Neddermeyer (1932–1937)
Don Bachardy (1953–1986)
Biography[edit]
Early life and work[edit]
Isherwood was born in 1904 on his family's estate in Cheshire near Stockport in the north-west of England.[5] He was the elder son of Francis Edward Bradshaw Isherwood (1869–1915), known as Frank, a professional soldier in the York and Lancaster Regiment, and Kathleen Bradshaw Isherwood, née Machell Smith (1868–1960), the only daughter of a successful wine merchant.[6] He was the grandson of John Henry Isherwood, squire of Marple Hall and Wyberslegh Hall, Cheshire, and he included among his ancestors the Puritan judge John Bradshaw, who signed the death warrant of King Charles I and served for two years as Lord President of the Council, effectively President of the English Republic.[7]
Isherwood's father Frank was educated at the University of Cambridge and Sandhurst Military Academy, fought in the Boer War, and was killed in the First World War.[8] Isherwood's mother, Kathleen, was, through her own mother, a member of the wealthy Greene brewing family of Greene King, and Isherwood was a cousin of the novelist Graham Greene, who was also related to the brewing family.[9] Frank and Kathleen christened their first son Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood, which Isherwood simplified on becoming a United States citizen in 1946.[10]
LGBT portal
An Isherwood Reader
