Portrait of Christopher Isherwood

Birthday profile

Christopher Isherwood

Christopher Isherwood, English-American author and academic (died 1986)

Born
August 26, 1904
Died
January 4, 1986
Zodiac sign
Virgo
Birth year
1904

About Christopher Isherwood

Christopher Isherwood was an English and American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, autobiographer, and diarist. His best-known works include Goodbye to Berlin (1939), a semi-autobiographical novel which was the basis for Cabaret (1966); A Single Man (1964), adapted into a film directed by Tom Ford in 2009; and Christopher and His Kind (1976), a memoir which "carried him into the heart of the Gay Liberation movement". His parents christened their first son Christopher William Bradshaw-Isherwood. Isherwood's father, Frank, was educated at the University of Cambridge and Sandhurst Military Academy, fought in the Boer War, and was killed in the First World War. At Repton, Isherwood met his lifelong friend Edward Upward, with whom he invented an imaginary English village called Mortmere, as related in his fictional autobiography, Lions and Shadows (1938). Through Auden, Isherwood met the younger poet Stephen Spender, who printed Auden's first collection, Poems (1928).

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

Christopher Isherwood timeline

  1. Through Auden, Isherwood met the younger poet Stephen Spender, who printed Auden's first collection, Poems (1928).
  2. At Repton, Isherwood met his lifelong friend Edward Upward, with whom he invented an imaginary English village called Mortmere, as related in his fictional autobiography, Lions and Shadows (1938).
  3. His best-known works include Goodbye to Berlin (1939), a semi-autobiographical novel which was the basis for Cabaret (1966); A Single Man (1964), adapted into a film directed by Tom Ford in 2009; and Christopher and His Kind (1976), a memoir which "carried him into the heart of the Gay Liberation movement".

The world when Christopher Isherwood was born

Christopher Isherwood was born in 1904. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1904

  • Best-selling book"The Crossing" – Winston Churchill

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentFirst Olympic Games in the Americas (St. Louis)
  • Top headlineRusso-Japanese War begins
  • Technology milestoneNew York subway opens
  • World population~1.64B

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderTheodore Roosevelt
  • U.S. population81.8M

1904 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Christopher Isherwood's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19042026
Population81.8M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.