Christopher Isherwood; W.H. Auden

Wystan Hugh ('W.H.') Auden (1907-1973), Poet.

Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood (1904-1986), Novelist.

Isherwood and Auden first met at preparatory school in Surrey. After a brief romantic relationship, the two became lifelong friends and literary collaborators. They travelled together to China to report on the Sino-Japanese war, and jointly produced the prose and verse book Journey to War (1939). They returned from China by way of America, and it was during this visit that they were both photographed in Central Park by pioneering fashion photographer, and Harper’s Bazaar contributor, Louise Dahl-Wolfe. A year later, both writers moved to New York. Isherwood published his novel Goodbye to Berlin (1937), with its famous opening line ‘I am a camera,’ just prior to their voyage.