Bücher von Robin Maugham

Set in London just after the Second World War, Robin Maugham's slim, haunting novella is a confessional tale told in a simple, urgent voice by one Richard Merton. He tells the story of Tony, a close friend from the war, who - breaking links with old friends and habits - steadily comes under the influence of his sinister new butler, Barrett. Concerned for his friend, Richard slowly uncovers a strange affair in which both class and sexual barriers have disintegrated into a dark flux. | 3 women, 3 men

This title was borrowed from a line by Noel Coward and it aptly describes a thoroughly engaging personal book which is a mixture of memoir cum genealogy cum record- straightener. The author's father was Lord Chancellor of England and his uncle was the High Priest of successful storytellers and they cordially detested each other to the grave. Two things the Maugham brothers seem to have agreed on in their dotage - that family history was a waste of money and time and that (this on the verge of 90) they had both been inflicted with frail constitutions. Robin Maugham, a successful novelist and scenarist, had nearly completed his research on the family just before Somerset Maugham's death. He turned up some entertaining and intriguing material on their English forebears, and an American branch. These are casual inserts among the most compelling passages of his book, which deal with the immediate background of Somerset Maugham and with aspects of Maugham's life and books. A portrait of the artist as an old man emerges which is neither sentimental nor indulgent. The last difficult years saw the master storyteller wrenched by turns of depression and a waspishness in conversation that often became vicious. He wept and bewailed his mother's death, his own homosexuality and attitude toward it right into his last days. In discussing this open secret, Robin Maugham is quite frank and unsensational although it is this view of his Uncle Willie's relationship to his younger secretary/companions that will stimulate more than the usual amount of comment reserved for partial autobiography. (Kirkus Reviews)