Christopher Isherwood

Brecht sparred with him, Huxley collaborated on film-scripts and Carver took him around sites from his fiction. Bradbury was met by chance in a bookshop — they became friends. Auden, known slightly at school, became a close friend, intermittent lover and trusted literary collaborator. Spender (met through Auden) spent time in Germany with him. He knew his publisher Woolf only slightly, but liked her. Forster, something of a mentor, entrusted him with getting ‘Maurice’ brought out posthumously. Stravinsky asked him if he’d like to hear his mass before they got drunk. Thomas Mann called him “the family pimp.”