Selina Hastings’s ‘The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham’

I just finished this excellent, entertaining and extremely readable biography of Somerset Maugham.  I highly recommend it….

Here is an excerpt from the review by Michael Dirda in the Washington Post and a link to the full review:

During the second half of his life, William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) was the most famous writer in the world. Not only did readers love his sardonic tales of sexual passion and dark secrets, of desperation and sudden violence, but so did Hollywood: More of his stories, novels and plays have been filmed than those of any other author. Just one short story, “Rain” — about the prostitute Sadie Thompson and the preacher obsessed with saving her — has provided star turns for Tallulah Bankhead, Gloria Swanson, Joan Crawford and Rita Hayworth, among others.

As this excellent biography by Selina Hastings makes clear, Somerset Maugham lived a life of quite astonishing richness and variety. Over the course of his 91 years, Maugham moved effortlessly around the world and in society: He dined with Henry James and Thomas Hardy, clashed with the sinister Aleister Crowley, argued Russian politics with Alexander Kerensky, discussed art with Sir Kenneth Clark and managed to enjoy the longtime friendship of both Winston Churchill and the Duchess of Windsor. Maugham’s luxurious home on the Riviera, the Villa Mauresque, offered guests beautiful gardens, first-class cuisine, delicious conversation and multiple sexual opportunities. It also boasted a fabulous collection of paintings, including a Gauguin that Maugham had discovered in a farmhouse when visiting Tahiti.

Throughout his life, Maugham always managed to look the perfect English gentleman, exquisitely turned out in bespoke suit and tie, punctilious about social conventions and just a bit shy because of an embarrassing stammer. But he was also exceptionally cosmopolitan in a decidedly continental manner, being absolutely fluent in French, Spanish, German and Italian and possessing enough Russian to work as a spy in Petrograd in 1917. Once he started to earn serious money, he traveled constantly, gathering material for his fiction and happy to be away from England. This was, in part, because he had been trapped into a wretched marriage with Syrie Wellcome, a noted interior designer and the mother of his only child, Liza.

via Selina Hastings’s ‘The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham,’ reviewed by Michael Dirda.