In Camera

At the head of Alan Hollinghurst’s interesting review of Peter Parker’s biography of Christopher Isherwood is this picture of Isherwood and W.H. Auden setting off for China.

Note the Smoking carriage sign behind them — sign of a vanished age. Being a photographic buff, my eye fell immediately on the camera hanging languidly from Auden’s neck. It’s a Leica. Shows impeccable taste. And then I was reminded of the famous Dorothy Parker joke. She reviewed Isherwood’s book, I Am a Camera, in one line. “Me no Leica”.