Isherwood’s fine memorial

In an admiring review (Spectator, 15 May, 2004) of Peter Parker’s biography of Christopher Isherwood, Philip Hensher conceded, perhaps reluctantly, that ‘Isherwood was not, in the end, a writer of the first rank’.

In an admiring review (Spectator, 15 May, 2004) of Peter Parker’s biography of Christopher Isherwood, Philip Hensher conceded, perhaps reluctantly, that ‘Isherwood was not, in the end, a writer of the first rank’. This is probably true. The second half of his career, after his departure to the USA in 1939, was disappointing. There were two good novellas, Prater Violet (1945) and A Single Man (1964), and a book of linked stories, Down There on a Visit (1962), which was good in parts, but his attempt at a major novel, The World in the Evening (1954) was a sad flop. There were autobiographical books of some charm and more interest, and an inferior last novel, A Meeting by the River (1967).