Christopher Isherwood was born in Cheshire in 1904. Auden was educated at Repton and Corpus Christi, Cambridge.

His first novel, All the Conspirators, was published in 1928. The following year he moved to Germany and taught in Berlin. He continued to write and published The Memorial (1932), Mr Norris Changes Trains (1935), Lions and Shadows (1938) and Goodbye to Berlin (1939). Isherwood also wrote the plays The Dog Beneath the Skin (1935), The Ascent of F6 (1936) and On the Frontier (1939) with W. H. Auden.

Isherwood emigrated to the United States in 1939 and became an American citizen in 1946. Later novels include Prater Violet (1945), The World in the Evening (1954), Down There on a Visit (1962), A Single Man (1964) and Christopher and his Kind (1972).

Christopher Isherwood died in 1986.