Born into the English landed gentry, the heir to a substantial country estate, Christopher Isherwood ended up in California, an American citizen and the disciple of a Hindu swami. En route, he became a leading writer of the 1930s generation, an unmatched chronicler of pre-Hitler Berlin, an experimental dramatist, a war reporter, a travel writer, a pacifist, a Hollywood screenwriter, a monk and a grand old man of the emerging gay liberation movement. Peter Parker traces the long journey of a man who never felt at home wherever he lived. country, and the dead weight of the past. Parker reveals the truth about Isherwood's relationship with his war-hero father, his strong-willed mother, and his disturbed younger brother, Richard, who was also homosexual. He also draws upon a vast number of letters to describe Isherwood's complicated relationships wich such lifelong friends as W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Edward Upward and John Lehmann. meaning in life.