Essential read: new Isherwood biography released next week
Katherine Bucknell, editor of the iconic writer's diaries, finally releases her biography of him next week
This is one of those ‘stop-what-you’re-doing-and-order-this’ moments. I’m literally counting down the minutes until I get my hands on Katherine Bucknell’s ten-years-in the-making biography of writer Christopher Isherwood next week (June 20th). Bucknell is uniquely positioned to write such a work, having edited Isherwood’s four volumes of diaries, works which have had such a tremendous effect on me since I first read them. In trying to analyse their impact, it’s something about the honesty and directness of Isherwood’s self-reflective writing, unflinchingly focused on the key questions of life, love and death, that continues to resonate so strongly with me. Isherwood led such a fascinating life himself, from his forever-mythologised time in Weimar Berlin, to his eventual settling in California and the life he lived there with his partner Don Bachardy, at a time when such committed gay relationships weren’t discussed or recognised. I reread the full set of diaries every few years, and they still have a profound impact, something I was able to tell Ms Bucknell in person when I was fortunate enough to meet her at an Isherwood centenary event at Cambridge University a few weeks ago. “Aren’t they great?!” she responded, her enduring enthusiasm evident.
I am equally expecting great things from this biography, the snippets Bucknell has shared so far on Instagram have been fascinating, hinting at how the layers of Isherwood’s fascinating personality will be gradually revealed. While she is keen to point out that the diaries were “him” and this is her own take on events, there is no one else, besides Bachardy himself perhaps, who could be trusted to deliver such a faithful rendering of Isherwood’s journey through life. During our brief meeting, Katherine asked what I did with my time (“…when not rereading the diaries?”) and I gave a somewhat muddled answer about working at the intersection of psychology and fashion. “Well fashion is all about psychology” she responded wisely.
I suspect Isherwood would never make claims about his own status as a style icon, his stylishness was more about the way in which he lived his life, never compromising on the path he wanted to follow, than an interest in mere clothes. Having said that, the floppy side-swept fringe of his Berlin days will forever be associated with that city’s rakish style, the boat-necked sweaters, wide pants and loafers of his early life in California whilst working as a Hollywood scriptwriter are breezily dapper, and the sheer stylishness of his mid-century home in Santa Monica (briefly seen in Tom Ford’s film of his work A Single Man), attest to a man who was always in control of his own identity and visibly living by his own codes.
With loved-ones pre-warned, I thoroughly plan to go off-radar once I dive into this book and I encourage you to do the same. From what I know of his life, it’s a complex story, covering so many cultural touchpoints from pre-war Europe to early Hollywood and the impact of intellectual and artistic emigrées there, through Vedantic mysticism and the gay liberation movement. I think you will thank me.
Christopher Isherwood Inside Out is published by Penguin Books on 20th June 2024.
Katherine’s Instagram can be found here.