English playwright, novelist, and short-story writer Somerset Maugham is widely regarded as one of the first authors of spy books to also earn his living as a secret agent, although he doesn’t appear to have been overly enamored by his life in the shadows.
“The work of an agent in the Intelligence Department is on the whole monotonous. A lot of it is uncommonly useless; the author has himself to make it coherent, dramatic and probable,” Maugham wrote in his foreword to his semi-autobiographical book Ashenden(1927), a collection of 16 stories.
One of the novelists’ admirers was 007 author Ian Fleming, who would drive down to Maugham’s Villa Mauresque to visit Britain’s literary celebrity in the south of France.
Although Maugham was born at the British Embassy in Paris in 1874 and Fleming three decades later in London in 1908, they shared a love of adventure, intelligence work, and literature. Some believe Fleming even used Maugham’s Ashenden as the basis for James Bond.
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English playwright, novelist, and short-story writer Somerset Maugham is widely regarded as one of the first authors of spy books to also earn his living as a secret agent, although he doesn’t appear to have been overly enamored by his life in the shadows.
“The work of an agent in the Intelligence Department is on the whole monotonous. A lot of it is uncommonly useless; the author has himself to make it coherent, dramatic and probable,” Maugham wrote in his foreword to his semi-autobiographical book Ashenden(1927), a collection of 16 stories.
One of the novelists’ admirers was 007 author Ian Fleming, who would drive down to Maugham’s Villa Mauresque to visit Britain’s literary celebrity in the south of France.
Although Maugham was born at the British Embassy in Paris in 1874 and Fleming three decades later in London in 1908, they shared a love of adventure, intelligence work, and literature. Some believe Fleming even used Maugham’s Ashenden as the basis for James Bond.
William Somerset Maugham was the fourth of six children. His formative years were beset by tragedy and hardship. His mother, Edith, died of tuberculosis at age 41, just six days after giving birth to a son, who died at just one day old. Maugham’s father died from cancer two years later.
The young Maugham was raised by his uncle, a vicar, in Whitstable, England. “I never really had a home. I was made an orphan at a very early age,” Maugham said.
His family intended him to become a lawyer but instead he qualified as a physician, becoming a surgeon at St. Thomas’ Hospital in London. Unknown to his family, he began writing at the age of 15 and his work as a trainee doctor gave him material for his first novel, Liza of Lambeth (1897).
“I always thought in those five years at St. Thomas’ Hospital I learned everything I know about human nature,” he said.
Maugham then wrote a series of comedies for the theater, enjoying success with Lady Frederick in 1907 and, at the age of 33, he had four plays running simultaneously in London’s West End theater district.
Somerset Maugham sketch by illustrator David Low
The double life of a spy
Maugham struggled with his sexuality. He married a wealthy divorcee, Syrie Wellcome, and they became the parents of a daughter in 1915. Although he lived as a husband and father in the UK, Maugham also had a male lover abroad and spent his later life on the French Riviera, first with Gerald Haxton, who died in 1944, and then with Alan Searle, his private secretary.
Although Maugham was considered too old to join the British Army at the start of WWI in 1914, he volunteered with the Ambulance Corps on the Western Front. He was a perfect candidate for intelligence work. Maugham had a British public school education and spoke English, French, and German fluently. In September 1915, he met an intelligence official who recruited him to work for Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service.
Maugham was reportedly a chief agent in Russia for the British and American secret services during the first few weeks that preceded the Bolshevik coup of 1917 yet little has been written about this period. Ten years passed before Maugham himself wrote about Russia, but even then he cast himself in the fictional role of Ashenden.
In a 1950 speech, Maugham lays out his plan to promote American literature
Somerset Maugham: Of Human Bondage
His hugely successful novels included Of Human Bondage (1915).
“I corrected the proofs in Flanders at the beginning of the First World War,” he recalled in a 1965 interview. “I had recollections that tormented me so I did what I would always do - I wrote them out in a book. After that, they ceased to torment me.”
Robert McCrum, writing in The Guardian, calls Of Human Bondage Maugham's semi-autobiographical masterpiece. "It earns its place in this list for the edgy economy of its dark, often cruel narrative more than its style (prosaic) or its humanity (tormented). Maugham's unforgettable portrait of Philip Carey is one that teenagers, typically, willingest like junkies, not least because Maugham poured so much of himself into the plot of the novel and its strangely sympathetic protagonist. Perhaps not since David Copperfield, an obvious inspiration, had an English writer mined his own life so explicitly or so ruthlessly."
Somerset Maugham at Villa Mauresque, France
Maugham's literary influences
Maugham was a great proponent of American literature and admired novelist Ernest Hemingway. He also listed Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn among his favorite books.
“I admired [British India-born author] Rudyard Kipling very much indeed but I can’t say I had any affection for him,” Maugham once said.
Maugham died aged 91, in 1965, satisfied he’d documented his life experiences for future generations.
Just before passing away, he told an interviewer: “As I look back I’m appalled at all of the mistakes in life, terrible mistakes. And the advantage of being a writer is that you are able to use all of your mistakes for copy.”
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