The twentieth-century author Christopher Isherwood, made famous by his 1930s work in Berlin, approached his writing about queerness, politics and religion with frankness and wit. The writer repeatedly fictionalised himself and his friends in his novels. Katherine Bucknell, the editor of four volumes of Isherwood’s diaries and letters, explains that it was his mother’s own diaries that first introduce us to the character of Isherwood. Using a wealth of unpublished material, Bucknell reveals the drama and complexity of the author’s inner world in an epic new biography.