Christopher Isherwood

Christopher Isherwood is a celebrated novelist, playwright, screen-writer, autobiographer, and diarist. He was openly gay and made this a theme of some of his writing. He was born near Manchester in the north of England in 1904, became a U.S. 

citizen in 1946, and died at home in Santa Monica, California in January 1986.

In 1953, he fell in love with Don Bachardy, an eighteen-year-old college student born and raised in Los Angeles. They were to remain together until Isherwood’s death.

In 1961, after seven years with Isherwood, Bachardy left home to study at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, where he worked under Keith Vaughan. but there was turmoil in his relationship with Isherwood as Bachardy struggled to establish his own artistic identity and to make an independent life and friendships. He had love affairs to rival those in Isherwood’s past, and Isherwood suffered terrible jealousy and loneliness even though he accepted and encouraged the affairs. Their relationship nearly ended in 1963, and Isherwood moved out of their Santa Monica house.

This dark period underpins Isherwood’s masterpiece A Single Man(1964).

Bachardy told Angeleno Magazine in their December 2009 issue: "Chris got the idea for that book when he and I were having a domestic crisis. We'd been together 10 years. I was making a lot of trouble and wondering if I shouldn't be on my own. Chris was going through a very difficult period (as well). So he killed off my character, Jim, in the book and imagined what his life would be without me.