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a gap in the first half of the year when he stopped writing in his diary while finishing Christopher and His Kind . The rationale for including the day-to-day diaries follows Isherwood’s own example in handling a longer gap in his much earlier diaries, from 1945 until 1948. In 1955, he made an outline of the missing years based on his pocket diaries, and he drew on this outline later when he wrote the memoir published posthumously as Lost Years .
    Readers will find supplemental information provided in several ways. Footnotes explain passing historical references, identify people who appear only once, offer translations of foreign passages, gloss slang, explain allusions to Isherwood’s or other people’s works in progress, give references to books of clear significance to Isherwood, sometimes provide information essential for making sense of jokes or witticisms, and so forth. For people, events, terms, organizations, and other things which appear more than once or which were of long-term importance to Isherwood and for explanations too long to fit conveniently into a footnote, I have provided a glossary at the end of the volume. The glossary gives general biographical information about many of Isherwood’s friends and acquaintances and offers details of particular relevance to Isherwood and to what he recorded in his diaries. A few very famous people—Bette Davis, Liza Minnelli, Elton John, John Travolta—do not appear in the glossary because although Isherwood may have met them more than once, he knew them or at least wrote about them in their capacity as celebrities. Others who were intimate friends—Truman Capote, David Hockney, Igor Stravinsky, Tennessee Williams—are included even though their main achievements will be familiar to many readers. This kind of information is now easily available on the internet, but a reader of this diary should be able to find what he or she immediately wishes to know and to get a feel for what Isherwood himself or his contemporaries may have known, without putting the book down and turning to a computer. Isherwood has audiences of widely varied ages and cultural backgrounds, and I have aimed to make his diaries accessible to all of them. Where he himself fully introduces someone, I have avoided duplicating his work, and readers may need to use the index to refer back to figures introduced early in the text who sometimes reappear much later.
    Hindu terminology is also explained in the glossary in accordance with the way the terms are used in Vedanta.
    In any book of this size, there are many details which do not fit systematically into even the most flexible of structures, but I hope that my arrangement of the supplemental materials will be consistent enough that readers can find what help they want.

Acknowledgements
    For me, this volume completes a task of more than fifteen years. My life has been transformed by the long and inspiring engagement with Christopher Isherwood, whom I never met, and Don Bachardy, whose friendship I cherish. I will always be grateful for their lives recorded in these diaries and for the opportunity entrusted to me by Don to prepare the diaries for publication. The passage of time has even brought with it a new life, my third child and youngest son, Jack Maguire; his father and I are proud that he is a godson to Don.
    I am indebted again to the benevolence and generosity of Pravrajika Vrajaprana of the Sarada Convent in Santa Barbara. She has continued to guide my research in Vedanta, in small matters of terminology and large ones of ritual and doctrine. She has again read every page of this book in a foolhardy attempt to save me from error. I am extremely grateful to her, to Bob Adjemian, to the late Peter Schneider, and to the many other nuns and monks at the Vedanta Society of Southern California who have responded to my queries.
    I have again had research assistance from Douglas Murray, Anne Totterdell, Gosia Lawik, and