W. Somerset Maugham — A Life: Vol I
From 1874–1945
Maugham led several different lives, not all of them in the glare of publicity, with many in the darkness of the cloak and dagger…”
Part I — Novelist, Playwright, Doctor, and Spy
W. Somerset Maugham is best known these days as a novelist, in fact his novels grow in popularity day by day, with such writers as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald influenced by him.
Apart from writing, Maugham led several different lives, not all of them in the glare of publicity, with many in the darkness of the cloak and dagger.
Even the circumstances surrounding the birth of William Somerset Maugham in Paris in 1874, has the feel of a spy novel about it.
Let me quote from Ted Morgan’s biography of Maugham:
“Maugham’s birth in an embassy rather than a hospital was the result of France’s defeat in 1870. Concern about manpower led to the proposal of a law that would give all children born on French soil automatic French citizenship, so they might be conscripted in the next war. The embassy, a mansion with gardens on the Champs-Elysees which had once been the residence of Napoleon’s sister, Pauline Borghese, was British soil, and the ambassador, Lord Lyons, had turned the second floor into a maternity…
