Remembering Gilbert Adair

Gilbert Adair was a mentor to me, even in the year following his stroke, which was when we became closest, and I knew him best.

I had just left the US Army and moved to London when I met Gilbert at a cocktail party at a friend’s flat in Maida Vale. Though it was an unseasonably warm autumn evening, he still wore a suit and tie, with a gray scarf draped around his shoulders. He looked remarkably urbane, every bit the author and critic, and we launched into a conversation about Christopher Isherwood, a writer that we both admired.

“Do you want to touch the hem of my sleeve?” he asked, with mock-seriousness. “I interviewed him once—during a trip to California.” And he told me a story of when they met, in a crescent shaped bar in Santa Monica, and Isherwood appeared at the far end, his tanned handsome face glowing.