The Isherwood-Bachardy Lectures
“In Isherwood's Footsteps: Seeing the World in the Round”
Pico Iyer, novelist and travel writer, delivered the Isherwood-Bachardy Lecture at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, on Thursday April 25, 2024. He spoke for an hour without notes, casting a spell over the audience, which included Don Bachardy.
Iyer will return to the Huntington on September 16 to talk with Katherine Bucknell about her biography CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD INSIDE OUT.
Pico Iyer (Photo: Brigitte Lacombe)
Iyer’s many books include the bestsellers The Art of Stillness, Video Night in Kathmandu and The Open Road. He has also written introductions to more than 80 other books, including the Vintage edition of Isherwood’s The Condor and the Cows. His four online TED talks have garnered over eleven million views and counting.
In 2021, the Huntington acquired Iyer’s archive. “The fact that The Huntington contains the archive of Christopher Isherwood, whom I knew a little,” he said, “as well as of Evelyn Waugh, and the fact that it has such a rich holding of Henry David Thoreau, my lifelong guide and role model, together consolidate my sense that this is the perfect home for all that lies close to my heart.”
The Isherwood-Bachardy Lectures at the Huntington Library allow distinguished academics, writers and artists to initiate new discussion inspired by the personal and artistic achievements of life companions Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy.
Past Isherwood-Bachardy Lecturers include Tom Ford, Edmund White, and Armistead Maupin.