Kathleen and Christopher

About this book

"Because Christopher Isherwood destroyed his diaries from 1935 to 1940, the letters in this volume - published for the first time and edited and introduced by Lisa Colletta - provide one of the few records of this part of his life not filtered through the lens of time and memory." "Warm, confiding, and sometimes quite caustic, the letters reveal a closer affection between the young Isherwood and his mother than his biographers have portrayed. While Isherwood acknowledged that it took him a long time to come to terms with his mother's influence on his life, the letters in Kathleen and Christopher dispute the prevalent idea that theirs was a relationship rife with conflict. They contain requests for money and books, descriptions of his travels, stories of his friends W.H. Auden and Stephen Spender, reactions to the critical reception of his Berlin Stories, and a tense account of his failed attempt to save his lover Heinz from conscription into the Nazi military. The final letters document Isherwood's journey to Los Angeles, where he permanently settled." "Isherwood's everyday correspondence, written in extraordinary times, reveals a complex yet wholly recognizable and very close bond between mother and son. She was for him, in turns, an agent, a sounding board, and an unbreakable connection to England."--Jacket.