Kathleen and Frank

Description

First published in 1971, this is a key book in Isherwood's career revealing as much about him as the parents he set out to portray. This is the story of Christopher Isherwood's parents - their meeting in 1895, marriage in 1903 after his father had returned from the Boer War, and his father's death in an assault on Ypres in 1915, which left his mother a widow until her own death in 1960. As well as a family memoir, it is a social history of a period of striking change, and a portrait of the world which shaped Isherwood and which he rejected.

Christopher Isherwood was born in 1904. He began to write at university and later moved to Berlin, where he gave English lessons to support himself. He witnessed first hand the rise to power of Hitler and the Nazi party in Germany and some of his best works, such as Mr. Norris Changes Trains and Goodbye to Berlin, draw on these experiences. He created the character of Sally Bowles, later made famous as the heroine of the musical Cabaret. Isherwood travelled with W.H Auden to China in the late 1930s before going with him to America in 1939. He died on 4 January 1986. His novel A Single Man was recently made into an award-winning film by Tom Ford, starring Colin Firth and Julianne Moore.

Shows a deeper understanding of much that he had once rebelled against * Guardian * A moving account of his parents' marriage based on their letters and diaries * Independent * A social history of the first half of the twentieth century and a study of artistic megalomania... Christopher writes about Christopher with fine, clear, cool precision * Spectator * There emerge from this book three remarkable characters, two highly edifying, one a writer of compelling talent * Catholic Herald *