The diaries tell how Isherwood became a disciple of the Hindu monk Swami Prabhavananda; about his pacifism during World War II; about his work as a screenwriter in Hollywood and his friendships with such gifted artists and intellectuals as Garbo, Chaplin, Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, Stravinsky, Aldous Huxley, Gielgud, Olivier, Richard Burton, and Charles Laughton, many of whom were emigres like himself.

Throughout this period, Isherwood continued to write novels and sustain his literary friendships with E. M. Forster, Somerset Maugham, Gore Vidal, Tennessee Williams, and others. He turned to his diary several times a week to record jokes and gossip, observations about his adopted country, philosphy and mystical insights. His devotion to his diary was a way of accounting for himself; he used it as both a discipline and a release. In spare, luminous prose, he also revealed his most intimate and passionate relationships, particularly with Bill Caskey and later with the very young Don Bachardy.

"A major achievement.... He is quite simply a marvelous diarist, one of the very best in the long tradition of English diarists starting with Samuel Pepys". -- Washington Times

"Intimate and compulsively readable". -- The Nation