Editions

Kathleen and Frank

  • Imprint: Vintage Classics

  • ISBN: 9780099561194

  • Length: 528  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 38mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 483g

  • RRP: £10.99

Kathleen and Frank

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.

  • Imprint: Vintage Classics

  • ISBN: 9780099561194

  • Length: 528  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 38mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 483g

  • RRP: £10.99

Reviews

  • 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

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About the Author

Christopher Isherwood

Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986) was one of the most celebrated writers of his generation. He left Cambridge without graduating, briefly studied medicine and then turned to writing his first novels, All the Conspirators and The Memorial. Between 1929 and 1939 he lived mainly abroad, spending four years in Berlin and writing the novels Mr Norris Changes Trains and Goodbye to Berlin on which the musical Cabaret was based. He moved to America in 1939, becoming a US citizen in 1946, and wrote another five novels, including Down There on a Visit and A Single Man, a travel book about South America and a biography of the Indian mystic Ramakrishna. In the late 1960s and '70s he turned to autobiographical works: Kathleen and Frank, Christopher and His Kind, My Guru and His Disciple and October, one month of his diary with drawings by Don Bachardy.

Christopher Isherwood

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Features

Releasing The Animals: bringing Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy's relationship to life

Katherine Bucknell edited The Animals, a collection of Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy's love letters. She charts the journey to bringing them to life in a podcast starring Simon Callow and Alan Cumming

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