For this month's mystery newsletter, dear newsletter enthusiasts, it is dedicated to one of literature's most enigmatic figures: W. Somerset Maugham. Behind the refined prose and worldwide acclaim lurked a man of many secrets—spy, coded storyteller, and master of human psychology.
In this issue, we'll peel back the layers of Maugham's fascinating life, examining how his clandestine activities for British Intelligence shaped his writing, uncovering the real-life inspirations behind his most chilling characters, and exploring the hidden meanings in his most celebrated works.
H. Somerset Maugham was born in 1894 to a family of lawyers. The expectation was that he would become a lawyer. His grandfather, Robert Maugham, was a prominent solicitor and co-founder of the Law Society of England and Wales. Robert Maugham handled the legal affairs of the British Embassy there, as his eldest surviving son, Charles, later did.
Maugham's father, Robert Ormond Maugham, was a prosperous solicitor, based in Paris, his wife, Edith Mary, lived most of her life in France, where all the couple's children were born, enjoyed a freedom in his life that was unlike that of the stoic and restrictive society he would come to live in after his parents died.
Maugham's mother died of tuberculosis in January 1882, a few days after his eighth birthday. He later said that for him her loss was "a wound that never entirely healed" and even in old age he kept her photograph at his bedside.
Two and a half years after his mother's death his father died, and Maugham was sent to England to live with his paternal uncle Henry MacDonald Maugham, the vicar of Whitstable in Kent. It was there in France that Maugham learned he was homosexual though he attempted to hide who he was from most of society.
From 1885 to 1890, Maugham attended The King's School, in Canterbury, where he was regarded as an outsider and teased for his poor English (French had been his first language), he was short in stature, and he had a pronounced stammer. This would later decide his decision to not pursue professions where the use of clear and stable speech was necessary to maintain your occupation.
After Maugham's return to Britain in 1892, he and his uncle had to decide on his future. A family friend found Maugham a position in an accountant's office in London, which he endured for a month before resigning.
The local physician in Whitstable suggested the medical profession, and Maugham's uncle agreed.
Maugham, who had been writing steadily since he was 15, intended to make his career as an author, but he dared not tell his guardian. From 1892 until he qualified in 1897, he studied medicine at St Thomas's Hospital Medical School in Lambeth.
In his work as a medical student Maugham met the poorest working-class people. Maugham took rooms in Westminster, across the Thames from the hospital. He made himself comfortable there, filled many notebooks with literary ideas, and continued writing nightly, while studying for his medical degree.
In 1897 he published his first novel, “Liza of Lambeth”, a tale of working-class adultery and its consequences. It drew its details from his obstetric duties in South London slums. The book received mixed reviews. The Evening Standard commented, “that there had not been so powerful a story of slum life since Rudyard Kipling's "The Record of Badalia Herodsfoot".
The first print run sold out within three weeks and a reprint was quickly arranged. Maugham qualified as a physician the month after the publication of "Liza of Lambeth" but he never practiced medicine though he was fully trained as one. He then embarked on his 65-year career as a writer, never looking back.
During this time, he met Syrie Wellcome, with whom he had a three year affair. The affair with Syrie produced his only child, daughter, Liza Wellcome and they soon were married. The marriage lasted for twelve years, but before, during and after it, Maugham's principal partner was a younger man, Gerald Haxton. This relationship would last for decades till Haxton’s untimely passing due to tuberculosis later in his life. But back to Maugham.
H. Somerset Maugham lived life on the edge, even agreeing to spy on enemies, to the British Crown, during World War 1. Long before Ian Fleming or John le Carré put pen to paper, Somerset Maugham was living the dangerous double life that would later form the modern spy novel.
In 1915, as World War I raged across Europe, the British Intelligence recruited Maugham—already an established writer—into their ranks. His cover? A traveling author researching his next novel. His actual mission? It was far more perilous.
Codenamed "Somerville," Maugham was dispatched to Geneva, Zurich, and later revolutionary Russia to gather intelligence and conduct counter-espionage operations. His literary reputation provided the perfect facade for meeting high-ranking officials, diplomats, and society figures who unwittingly supplied him with valuable information.
Maugham once remarked, "The advantage of being a writer is that you can spy on people. You're there, listening to every word, but part of you is observing. Everything is useful to a writer."
His most dangerous assignment came in 1917 when the British Secret Intelligence Service sent him to Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) with a nearly impossible task: prevent the Bolshevik Revolution. Though this mission ultimately failed, Maugham navigated a landscape of secret meetings, coded messages, and constant surveillance.
His handler reportedly instructed him to burn all communications after reading—a practice Maugham continued with personal letters throughout his life.
Unlike modern spy novelists who work from research, Maugham's espionage fiction grew directly from experience. He knew firsthand the moral ambiguity, the constant fear of exposure, and the psychological toll of maintaining false identities.
These experiences forever changed his worldview and his writing, infusing his subsequent works with an authenticity and psychological depth that continues to captivate readers today.
In 1928, Somerset Maugham quietly revolutionized espionage fiction with the publication of "Ashenden: Or the British Agent"—a collection of interconnected short stories that forever changed how spy narratives would be written. Unlike the romantic adventure tales that preceded it, Maugham's work introduced a startling new realism to the genre, drawing directly from his own experiences in British Intelligence during World War I.
The character of Ashenden—a writer recruited into intelligence work—served as Maugham's literary alter ego, allowing him to process his own complicated feelings about his secret work while maintaining plausible deniability about specific operations.
When questioned about the authenticity of certain episodes, Maugham would famously reply with calculated ambiguity: "Fact and fiction are so intermingled in my work that now, looking back on it, I can hardly distinguish one from the other."
This deliberate blurring of reality and invention created a tantalizing mystery around the stories themselves. Readers and critics alike continue to debate which episodes were drawn from real operations and which were purely fictional constructs.
This meta-mystery surrounding the text itself adds another layer of intrigue to what is already a foundational work in espionage literature—one that established patterns and themes that continue to define the genre nearly a century later.
Published in 1919, "The Moon and Sixpence" remains one of Maugham's most disturbing and enigmatic novels.
Ostensibly inspired by the life of post-impressionist painter Paul Gauguin, the novel follows Charles Strickland, a conventional London stockbroker who abandons his family to pursue painting obsessively.
But beneath this artistic awakening narrative lurks a darker tale involving a potential murder that continues to puzzle Maugham scholars and mystery enthusiasts alike. Midway through the novel, Strickland forms a complex relationship with fellow artist Dirk Stroeve and his wife Blanche.
The relationship culminates in tragedy when Blanche, after being abandoned by Strickland, commits suicide by drinking poison. Or does she? Maugham's narrator—himself an unreliable figure—provides only secondhand accounts of her death, and the circumstances remain suspiciously vague.
Maugham wrote this work, and many others, that will entertain and thrill the mystery seeking mind. Towards the end of Maugham's secret service, in 1926, H. Somerset Maugham purchased Villa La Mauresque, a stunning property on Cap Ferrat on the French Riviera.
For the next four decades, this magnificent white villa with its Moorish arches and Mediterranean gardens would serve as more than just a writer's retreat—it became a carefully constructed fortress where Maugham could protect his many secrets while paradoxically placing himself at the center of European social life.
The villa's architecture itself reflected Maugham's compartmentalized psychology. Public spaces were designed for entertaining and creating calculated impressions, while private areas remained strictly off-limits to most visitors. Maugham installed an elaborate system of locks throughout the property and maintained a strict protocol for handling documents—habits that suggested his intelligence background remained active long after his official service ended.
H. Somerset Maugham spent his final years were marred by his increasing senility and suspicion. He attempted to disinherit his daughter, Liza, and to make Searle his adopted son, but the courts prevented it. Maugham died in the Anglo-American Hospital in Nice on the night of December 16 at the age of 91, of complications following a fall.
H. Somerset Maugham won many awards and distinctions for his full body of work. His life was full of adventure, ilicit affairs and travels that spanned the globe. His ability to transcribe his interactions into stories and plays for his many novels is simply amazing.
He was never flashy. Others praised Maugham for his lucidity and called him "the last of the great professional writers".
That's what he was: the last of the great professional writers and we can read his work just to learn just what all the talk is about.
Well, that's all as we leave this month of March and move into the joys of spring. Till next time, remember to stay grateful, enjoy the warmth and love your pets, my friends. Be well, dear readers, be well.
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Mystery: March 26, 2025 Issue [#13050]
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cause you only get that one day but we Irish find other ways to celebrate but anyways, let's get back to the newsletter. 
Thank you very much 
