He moved to America in 1939, becoming a US citizen in 1946, and wrote another five novels, including Down There on a Visit and A Single Man, a travel book about South America and a biography of the Indian mystic Ramakrishna. I couldn’t help but feel somewhat protective towards him, a little like Bradshaw does when he meets him on the train.

A hand fracture is a break in one of the bones in the hand, which occurs when force greater than the bearable limit is applied against a bone. I must have been already drunk when I arrived at the Troika, because I remember getting a shock when I looked into the cloakroom mirror and found that I was wearing a false nose.Unauthorised use and/or duplication of this material without written permission from this blog’s author is prohibited. For further information regarding these conditions please refer to the conditions or procedures section. Set as it is in the Berlin of the early 1930s, the novel takes the reader to the restaurants and nightclubs of the city, the atmosphere heavy with a mix of dust, perspiration and cheap perfume. On his arrival at Norris’ flat, Bradshaw soon discovers that his new friend runs an import-export business. Isherwood may be using this form of sexual content to show the difference between fantasy and reality.

Isherwood, and Norris choose the Left, even though Norris is not necessarily, ever, quite what he seems, and may have fingers in many pies, as he also has some friends whose political allegiance seem to belong more naturally to the right. His features are somewhat out of kilter, not least his chin which appears to have slipped sideways ‘like a broken concertina,’ plus he’s wearing a wig. Characters are either not quite what they seem, or are employing a persona to get what they want from others or, like Bradshaw, don’t quite know yet who they are. I started reading Mr Norris Changes Trains as part of the summer book challenge on The Reader’s Room, but I haven’t felt as compelled to chain read like I usually do this summer, so I didn’t finish the challenge. This sounds wonderful – I’ve always rather avoided Isherwood, mainly because I wasn’t a fan of Cabaret back in the day.After his brusque self-introduction, he proved most affable and treated us, without further request, to a discourse on his career, aims, and methods of work. Isherwood did not explicitly claim that he was William Bradshaw although the novel describes Isherwood's own experiences. I suppose at this stage of their rise, before they gained power, while they were saying the less inflammatory things that would win over voters and gain them a foothold in popular politics, the Nazis might have seemed to some to be celebrities of a sort. In relation to a main concern of the novel, submission, it is by this apparently sexual content that a different concern is vocalized. Isherwood even has the oblivious Norris deliver a moment of ironic awareness of the situation in Germany.

Even though it’s abundantly clear that Mr Norris is something of a swindler, he is hugely likeable with it. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.However, the ending is questionable as to whether Norris ever really pays for the consequences of his actions. Norris’s fastidious oddness - the wearing of bizarre wigs and an obsessive attention to prinkings and powderings not usually found at that time openly engaged in by English men, certainly not in England, is typical of the Berlin experience – decadent, sophisticated and utterly unprovincial, which proved alluring about to those seeking a more colourful, even dangerous, European experience. I can smell it whenever I think about it, so it made me laugh to read that it was a special Sunday meal for prisoners in 1930s Berlin.

There is an amount of pathos at the end of the novel, when Bradshaw realises Norris’s true colours and hopes for a more honest discourse. As William confronts him over his sins we are told he ‘…looked…like a spaniel which is going to be whipped’, which also links to my later point on submission, and subsequently leads to William half forgiving him and even helping him! This is an entertaining romp which vividly portrays the decadence and growing political tensions - and, as the story progresses, growing intolerance and persecution - in early 1930s Berlin.Norris uses Bradshaw as a decoy to get an aristocratic friend of his, Baron Pregnitz, to take a holiday in Switzerland and meet "Margot" under the guise of a Dutchman. Jonathan also specialises in cosmetic surgery around the eyes (blepharoplasty) and is a member of the British Oculoplastic Surgery Society. Hamilton was served time in prison for bankruptcy, theft, being a threat to national security, and, interestingly, numbered amongst his friends not only Isherwood himself, but the unlikely combination of Winston Churchill and Aleister Crowley! There must be a whole genre of fiction that includes various meetings on trains, Strangers on a Train being the obvious one that comes to mind!