Showing Lions and Shadows: An Education in the Twenties by Christopher Isherwood

In this largely autobiographical book Isherwood gives a fascinating account of the making of a writer. His story begins with the intellectual hothouse atmosphere of Cambridge in the early twenties: but it is his wickedly funny depiction of the Bohemian life of London, with thinly disguised portraits of many brilliant men - Auden and Stephen Spender among them - that is most intriguing. With his witty, appealing and sometimes outrageous pen Isherwood illuminates the society that created writers and thinkers who have shaped much of the twentieth century.