Myself Through Others Memoirs

Born in London, England, of Cornish stock, David Watmough arrived on Canada’s West Coast in 1961 and quickly became a fixture on the Canadian cultural scene. Now in his eighth decade, Watmough, often spoken of as this country’s senior gay male fiction writer, has decided to commit his memories to paper.

Given the autobiographical nature of his fiction, the prolific raconteur has opted for a novel approach to his own life by telling his story through his encounters with the numerous people he has met, befriended, loved, and jousted with over the years. And what a parade of personalities it is! Watmough serves up incisive, trenchant, often witty profiles of writers W.H. Auden, T.S. Eliot, Stephen Spender, Raymond Chandler, Tennessee Williams, Carol Shields, Margaret Laurence, Jane Rule, and Wallace Stegner; artists Bill Reid and Jack Shadbolt; politicians and celebrities Pierre Trudeau, Clement Atlee, and Eleanor Roosevelt; Hollywood actress Jean Arthur; and a host of others.

David Watmough is the author of a cycle of fictions that features gay "everyman" Davey Bryant, who has appeared in twelve volumes, including No More into the Garden (1978), The Year of Fears (1987), and Hunting with Diana (1996). Watmough is also a playwright, short-story writer, critic, broadcaster, and the author of nine other books. His novel Thy Mother's Glass was nominated in 2002 for CBC's Canada Reads. He lives in Vancouver.