A brief introduction
THE FIRST SEVEN PAGES OF:
THE VISCOUNT BOOKS & CROOKS
THE LOST CHRONICLES OF ROBIN MAUGHAM
- a true story
Acknowledgments
I would like to express my heart-felt gratitude to my late partner, Robin with whom I travelled the world and to my dad for passing to me his love of poetry and literature.
During the course of my search for the lost chronicles of Robin Maugham, I took counsel from several legal professionals. For the sake of the narrative, I combined them into one character, the character of Aemon Ray. However, my main source of help and advice came from my good friend and colleague, the late Christopher Wright. (Please see Christopher Wright 'In Memoriam' at the end of this piece)
Prologue – East End docklands, 1956
When I was a kid, about six I guess, I was awakened in the early hours with the deep call of fog horns from cargo boats that passed in the night, pulled and nudged by oily tugs from their moorings.
And I’d stand on my bed and open my window and listen to their ghostly calling; looking up at the stars and the vastness of space.
Between our house and the Thames stood a street of rickety Victorian dwellings and beyond, dotted between bombsites and factories, decaying warehouses with tall cranes that stretched over quays where night workers scurried between floodlit lamps; my old man sweating amongst them, heaving frozen lamb up from the dark hold of the ship’s belly.
And I’d find myself staring at the group of seven stars they call The Plough that form the shape of a ladle. For me it was a spoon that belonged to a magical giant. And I’d count myself down from ten to zero and blast off in my rocket to be as far away from where I was and as close to him as I could get.
*
PRESENT DAY
It’s a hard call to unload a truck full of memories.
This morning four large boxes of manuscripts arrived via courier. The material had been discovered in the basement of my London literary agents.It will complete the archive I've collected over the years of the life-work of my partner, Robin – the writer, Robin Maugham.
Even though he had died in the winter of ’81, in my mind the man was still alive. Not surprising that since I’d been his Personal Assistant for the last eleven years of his life; held on to the ropes when his mood swings sent him up the barometer; had him rushed to intensive care more times than I can remember; pieced together travel plans; booked us into swank hotels; exotic retreats; huddled up close in the seedy bars. We worked together on over a dozen projects: novels, plays, film scripts, more than one for each year we were together. That’s enough to fill any life.
It seems to me, it’s by chance, or the call of destiny, if you like, that worlds collide and great things happen in your life. I was at a cross road when I met Robin needing that extra sign to show me which path to take; Robin had just finished his autobiography; so, same as me, he was at the end of one chapter and at the beginning of another.
I met him in the autumn of 1970, feels like yesterday. I was a cute looking lad of nineteen; pretty much with his head in the clouds. Robin was a windswept 54. You could say, there was an age gap between us bigger than the drop in the Grand Canyon; to say we were from opposite sides of the track would be an understatement; though that didn’t stop us from having all the big things in common, love of words, love of music, love of art.
As I carried the memorabilia into the hall and placed it beneath the bookcase I’d bought to house his work, I got a waft of his cologne and I saw him for a moment standing in front of me in his smart navy blue, double-breasted blazer with the anchor buttons. I could see that broad grin of his and the dark hair combed into a perfect quiff.
Earlier I said the arrival of the four boxes would complete my collection, but strictly that’s not true because what is absent, without leave, you might say, is perhaps the most important part of any archive: the original thoughts contained in an author's diaries. Robin’s journals went on the missing list in bizarre circumstances during the Winter of ’91. They had been left in trust with his Estate for the benefit of yours truly – all 36 of them. They contained memories that dated back to the war years and his connections with those in high office.
Looking back on it now, when my search for the diaries began I had no idea of the danger that lay ahead; nor that the journey I was about to embark upon would change my life forever. It's a story with more twists and turns than a Cretan labyrinth complete with bull headed monster.
*
Whodunnit
The fateful call informing me that the chronicles had apparently vanished, came from my loyal Brief Aemon Ray.
Aemon was one of those rare diamonds you come across in the legal profession. The man had a pulsating heart beneath the old school tie and a steady hand to rein me in. Robin had supported him in his early days, helped him hold on to his humanity in the dry world of small print. And Aemon had never forgotten his kindness. So, after my partner had checked out, the guy had deemed it his duty to help me; sometimes as my official representative and sometimes as an unofficial advisor. The point was I had a decent professional to back me up.
I’d asked him to get in touch with Lord Robin’s estate about the chronicles some time back. I'd decided at long last, after a set of ‘odd coincidences’ which I'll explain later, that now was the time to face the past. It was a few days after my written request that Aemon rang me.
“All but six of Robin’s diaries have gone missing, William, from the home of one of the executors, his sister, the Honourable Diana. I expect you know the lady?”
“Yes, I do,” I replied, shocked to hear the news.
“Diana says the burglar climbed up a drainpipe.”
“A drainpipe?!” If I hadn't been so stunned, I would have laughed out loud.
“Yes, apparently so, a drainpipe, William. And in broad daylight. The police, in fact the Chelsea Crime Squad, have been called in and an investigation is in progress. It’s suggested the diaries contained inflammatory comments about certain ‘other persons’ and the lady appeared to be in a state of some distress. She said she doesn’t suspect foul play.”
“But the diaries have been stolen, that's foul play, isn't it?”
“Robin’s sister never used that word: stolen. She said the chronicles had ‘gone missing’. She also mentioned that she believed they may have been taken by somebody known to the family. Do you have any idea who that could be?”
“No,” I answered, still trying to focus.
“Also, the Honourable Diana has passed on her telephone number for you to contact her. You’re not obliged to ring her if you don’t want to. But she seemed eager to talk to you.”
He gave me the number and I scribbled it down.
“I haven’t seen the lady in years, not since Robin...”
“I see,” Aemon replied thoughtfully and then added, “Oh, by the way, I believe the Press may have gotten hold of the story. There could be an article appearing in one of the broadsheets. So be prepared to see your name in the newspapers, William,” he warned.
There are weird moments in life when you think you should be feeling one thing yet you feel something completely opposite. Sure, part of me was shocked that my partner's journals had vanished; yet another part kept telling me that something good would come of it – something good?! But how could the theft of Robin's diaries be in any way good? I was confused. At that moment I had no idea of what lay ahead; except it was pretty obvious a whole lot of unexpected shite was about to be dredged up from the Stygian depths.
And then just as my solicitor had speculated a few days later there it was, the article in the Peterborough column of The Telegraph, dated: Friday, 22 November 1991, with the eye-catching heading:
MAUGHAM WHODUNNIT PUZZLES CHELSEA
THE POLICE are investigating the disappearance of 24 volumes of intimate diaries from the Chelsea home of Diana Maugham, niece of Somerset Maugham. The diaries belong to her late brother Robin, the second Viscount Maugham, an author, who died in 1981.
There are suggestions that the diaries may have been destroyed to prevent publication of details about Robin Maugham’s homosexual love affairs and his connection with the intelligence services. Seven remaining volumes of the diaries have now been placed in a bank.
But Diana Maugham, 83, co-executor of her brother’s estate, does not suspect foul play. “It is a most unpleasant mystery,” she says from a health farm in Suffolk.
“The burglar came up the drainpipe…”
There it was, that line: 'The burglar came up the drainpipe.' And hold on a minute, didn’t Aemon say there were six diaries left? The article says seven. Also, I was sure Robin wrote thirty-six journals. And with six still remaining that would leave thirty, not twenty-four. I continued reading.
The diaries, bound in hard maroon covers, were left in trust for her brother’s close friend, the playwright, William Lawrence. Last month he asked to see them for the first time and was told they had been stolen. He says: “I was astonished. I received a letter from her solicitor expressing alarm and referring to ‘personal comments on other persons, the publication of which might well be defamatory’”.
The author Peter Burton, who worked with Maugham, fears the diaries may have been destroyed to prevent any biography of Maugham. He adds: “It is the middle classes against the gay side of Robin’s life.” Maugham was only following in a family tradition – Somerset Maugham had notoriously exotic sexual tastes.
In certain literary quarters the enormity of the writer’s depravity knew no bounds. But from what I knew, today, the old boy’s indulgences would hardly raise an eyebrow. And, as far I was aware, the doyen didn’t go in for sadism, except when it came to his tongue; I read on.
According to a close relation of Diana Maugham, she is terribly distressed and fears that she may be accused of deliberately destroying the diaries. The relation went on to speculate that it was no ordinary burglar who took the diaries, indeed, the deed may even have been done by somebody known to the family.
'Somebody known to the family'? But who? Since the Maugham circle included a row of Chief Justices and a veritable gaggle of be-monocled High Court Lordships, my mind boggled; especially at the thought of their eminences attempting an assault on a drainpipe.
I must admit the moment I saw his sister’s name, the Honourable Diana peep from behind a ‘PROVIDED THAT’ clause during probate, I could smell the tar bubbling in the cauldron. It is true to say I viewed the lady with a certain apprehension mixed with respect in equal measure. She was fiercely protective of anything to do with the family name.
Consequently, I’d held back for eleven years after my partner’s death before putting in my request to view the blessed journals. Quite frankly, I had no desire to get drawn back into my past; the one habit that I carried with me from those days was the compulsion to get out my notebook and start scribbling. You see, I couldn’t let go of the thousand words a day bug, the thousand words a day Robin would dictate, the four pages I'd jot down in speedwriting. I’d got used to it. So out came the pen and off I'd go. Maybe it was a way of connecting with him. Since his death whenever I thought of the old bugger, I'd get that same churning feeling.
*
A map
It’s an easy thing to get lost, slip up on the road, head in the wrong direction. Then you need to find somebody fast to pull you up, give you a map.
Sometimes I got the feeling I’d somehow conjured my partner up, long before he appeared in real time. You see, my old man had an abiding love for literature and at his high altar was none other than the grand old man of letters, Somerset Maugham, himself. That was because he’d read every one of the doyen’s novels whilst banged up in the nick. Dad spent half of his life in one institution or the other.
I have a vivid memory of him coming home after doing time. I was still a nipper. I flung my arms around him and he told me that he loved me so much he’d put me “between two slices of bread” and eat me. Funny how certain memories stay with you forever
But whatever lock-up he found himself in, dad always got gravitated toward the books department, usually ending up as head librarian, due to his previous – experience. It meant he kept his nut down and connected. And Maugham’s works had been at the top of his reading list and his way out of bedlam. “If you’ve never read Of Human Bondage or The Moon and Sixpence, you’ve never lived, boy!” was his mantra.
But Robin Maugham? To be honest when I first met the writer, I didn’t have a clue who he was. But, by the time I came on the scene, he had already penned a rack of novels; stage plays and travel books; including his account of desert warfare titled Come to Dust; an acclaimed family biography, Somerset and All the Maughams; and amid all the promise he'd produced what many refer to as a classic: The Servant, which the New York Times declared ‘...a masterpiece of writing’. The pace was non-stop which was ironic because the guy always seemed on the edge of meeting his Maker. His ailments were enough to fill an extended edition of Stedman’s medical dictionary. So, not bad going for a sick man whose bed chart went up and down more times than a lift in a bawdyhouse. All of which was of great concern to his devoted sisters, who rebuked their brother on a regular basis for his un-abbreviated excesses. Their brother’s problem being that part of him felt the need to let loose, whereas the other was deeply restrained by form and protocol. Safe to say the name Maugham hovered over Robin’s head like the proverbial sword of Damocles; though that didn’t stop him swishing it about whenever he felt the need.
Robin was the 2nd Viscount Maugham of Hartfield, his old man having been the 1st after rising to the top of the legal game. Robin could trace his family back to the 17th century with a series of the Reverends and legal beavers into the airy echelons of the upper middle classes. And as day follows night the boy had been expected to obediently hang on to his old man’s coat-tails: nurse, nanny, governess, Preparatory School, Eton, Cambridge, and finally, the smart suited Lincoln’s Inn barrister – and the sky’s the fucking limit.
Some people have a talent for the Law; they have a deep instinct to put things in order and thrive on unravelling convoluted argument. However, it’s technical intricacies, its wheels, wires and pullies, you might say, which could result in the dropping of a clanger over some vital subsection of a clause, brought Robin to the point of despair. He knew only too well the burden of taking on the mantle; he was afraid it might turn him into the astringent judge he saw in his father, the Lord Chancellor.
Clearly something had come loose in that ever grinding, mind munching machine because out whooshed Robin, whose only compelling interest in the Bar was what gorgeous creature happened to be serving him a double from behind it. And, instead of a life of objections, he overruled his old man on the grounds of artistic insanity and that spending the next fifty years ascending the greasy pole of the legislature was destined to land him in a terrible fucking mess; instead, he preferred to shed light on some of the taboo issues of the day - in his work as a writer and journalist; albeit, given the chance, with a vodka and tonic in hand. Ipso facto, he cut himself a large portion of his Papa’s upper crust pie whilst simultaneously taking out a writ against ‘normality’ and went for the life of a maverick author.
The man came into my life as if he was leading the cavalry over the sunlit hill; or that’s what I thought, until I realised the cavalry was chasing him and he was running like crazy toward yours truly, a fresh faced, curly haired Eastender, who was already running like hell from whatever it was about to bite his own arse.
I was brought up on the bomb sites of the docks, half a dozen years after the war, not that far from the smelly old Thames. I was the product of the local council-run school; Robin was the product of the freshly mowed playing fields of Eton. Yet there was a chemistry going on between us that didn’t give a toss for time or where we were born. I brought Robin the juicy bone of youth; the vitality and hope for tomorrow; he brought me a ticket to his villa and to his life– and what a life it was.
And the rebel jumped around inside me like it jumped around inside him; that was the other thing we had in common, we both had the urge to take risks; to put ourselves on the edge.
As a kid I’d curl up in an old tractor tyre I’d pulled from a nearby bombsite and I’d get a bunch of mates to launch me down-hill at a thousand miles an hour into the graveyard of our local church of all places. The higher the wall the more I wanted to jump off it. In those days in the East End us kids were told to run free we were the off-spring of the survivors of a shell scarred landscape; every day felt like a bonus.
So, I was at war as Robin was at war – and at war he was. Ever since the Western Desert, the man had been on one drug or another, from the battle of Knightsbridge onwards. And yet he maintained a discipline, that I could only admire. Not a single day passed without him taking up his pen; it had become part of a pattern of release.
*
Every night, whether boozed up or on the wagon, Lord Robin would sit in his bed in those neatly pressed pyjamas of his, scribbling out an account of what had gone down that day.
It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that in his time the writer had known every big gun and ne’er-do-well of his time: from the political giants to the literary geniuses; from the criminal intriguers to the human sex traffickers of Riyadh; whether by accident or design Robin Maugham had ended up bang in the middle of the carnage. And though he had the manners of an angel, springing to his feet no matter who came into the room, when the line was drawn that other side would emerge, the outspoken one that didn't give a damn; the one who said it as it was, which got up the noses of the great and the not so good alike. So, the writer made enemies – powerful enemies.
However, it is true to say my partner’s life wasn’t exactly all grind and gloom. In the midst of whatever was going down, he never lacked a generous helping of some of the more pleasurable things life had to offer. That’s how he’d been brought up, with a silver spoon in his mouth and, as I was to find out, a silver dagger in his back.
As far as I knew Robin’s whole life story was wrapped up in those diaries of his. They stopped a year or two before they turned off that machine – the one that kept him alive, I mean.
Addendum
My quest to uncover the whereabouts of my partner’s lost journals was to lead me into a tangled web of intrigue which changed my understanding of the world and of my past forever.
Robin Maugham, the 2nd Viscount Maugham, worked for British Intelligence; his connections were world-wide from Winston Churchill, his uncle Somerset Maugham, the rich and powerful, to the notorious spies and the human traffickers of North Africa.
We were partners for ten years yet, in certain ways, he was a man I did not know. After his death I discovered that 36 diaries had been left for me in Trust. When I put in a request to see them my lawyer informed me that they had mysteriously disappeared.
Christopher Wright In Memoriam
Christopher Wright died on the 2nd April 2022. I attended his Service of Remembrance and Thanksgiving at the modest 17th century Lincoln’s Inn Chapel. The Service was traditional and sublime.
There is a natural hesitation when commenting upon sensitive occasions, especially when the loss of a friend or loved one is involved. But my experience at Lincoln’s Inn Chapel was so fitting and so in tune with my memory of Christopher that please allow me to recount a single moving event at the reception.
Wine and snacks were being handed out by waiters to the smartly turned out gathering, when
I was drawn to a rotund gentleman who seemed to beam friendliness. I sat down beside him and began asking the question everybody asks: How did you know the deceased?
Like Christopher he’d been a solicitor and then a judge. He must have been in his eighties, I guess. He had a full handsome face that over the decades had set itself into a fixed smile of ruddy jubilation.
“The doctor says, ‘How much wine do you drink?’ and I answer, ‘Enough to keep me happy’ I don’t have long to go and I may as well jolly well enjoy it, wouldn’t you say?”
“Absolutely,” I answered. “Why not!”
It was then a slim man perhaps in his mid-seventies sidled toward our table.
“He was a judge?” he enquired in the direction of my learned companion.
“Judge, that’s right, that’s right,” the gentleman agreed.
“A Judge is that right?”
“That’s right.”
“I see,”
The man nodded and turned back into the room.
“He was a Judge. Christopher and I were first Solicitor and then Judges. But does he
mean was always a Judge? Oh, dear! Where has he gone?!”
The chap was still standing in the middle of the room, surrounded by smartly suited lawyers.
“That’s him,” I said pointing.
“Oh, goodness me. I must tell him quickly in case he drops a clanger!”
And the elderly legal beaver scurried off to save the man from some dreadful social blunder.
He was showing the same concern I’d seen in Christopher; to help others.
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE BOOK:
"…your book gave me enormous pleasure, reminding me so agreeably of our mis-spent youth… a beautiful book.”
Professor Sir Michael Howard
British military historian, Professor of Military and Naval History at Yale University and founder of the Department of War Studies, King's College London.
“Your writing is clear, crisp, has a good natural flow, so very readable… a fascinating and honest book - congratulations.”
Colin Spencer
Author, Playwright, Artist
Robin Maugham is an underrated writer and this fascinating book by William Lawrence will help bring a new light to this complex character.'
Andrew Lownie
Biographer: The Mountbattens
Stalin’s Englishman
“Have just read it… and it was something that is summed up in one word… Excellent!.
You write so smoothly; it all just flows. While also being very descriptive and most of all fun… Am sure you’ll have a well-deserved success.”
Allan Warren
Portrait Photographer, covered the wedding of Judy Garland to Mickey Deans; members of the British Royal Family.
ABOUT WILLIAM LAWRENCE
William Lawrence was brought up in the East End of London. His father worked in the Royal Albert docks by day by night he recited poetry as a Performance Artist in the local bars.
Lawrence trained at the Chelsea/Hammersmith School in Sculpture. But his love of literature led him toward the world of books and he worked as PA to the late 2nd Viscount Maugham – known as the writer Robin Maugham from 1971-1981. During that period, he took down in dictation, typed out and creatively assisted the author with over a dozen of his plays, novels and filmscripts.
Lawrence’s first play was CATWALK – a reading at the Red Lion Islington,1989. It was written in loving memory of two former friends: Gary (27) and Martin (36) both of whom died of 'AIDS'. The drama was first performed at the Marlborough, Brighton as: THE SHOW MUST GO ON. Then rewritten later as NEVER WALK ALONE and sponsored by Aids Positive Underground based in Brighton, East Sussex, as a tribute to its leading light, Graham Wilkinson. Soon after that the work was produced and directed by Hugh Futcher for the Theatro Technis in Camden. The reviews:
Never Walk Alone is a… well constructed, often moving two-hander… Lawrence never forfeits our trust… Where it excels is in its presentation of humanity stripped bare… The play may not make you feel better about death, but it may well make you feel considerably better about life.
Rosalind Carne
The Guardian
Never Walk Alone… an abrasive two-hander… about opposites painfully growing towards each other… From the violence of the football terraces… to the melancholy of a hospice… both the rabidly heterosexual Dave and the happily homosexual Luke have Aids … ruthlessly hewn… theatrically gripping piece…
Peter Burton
The Stage
“…a brilliant work.”
Colin Spencer
Writer William Lawrence avoids cliché… insightful, witty dialogue and poignant characterizations.
Debbie Kruger
Time Out
After the positive response to the play, NEVER WALK ALONE was sponsored by Hasting Arts Council to tour schools, colleges and universities in the South East – as part of an AIDS awareness campaign when the HIV virus was still fatal and spreading fast.
Lawrence adapted a fragment of the play for the mainstream in order to break stereotypes. It can and can be seen on YouTube under the title: TOMORROW BELONGS TO NOBODY by William Lawrence. In the video Lawrence has focused the work into a monologue of about ten minutes, delivered by a female footballer who is living with HIV. The film was shown on World AIDS Day
SCULPTURE
In 1982 Lawrence exhibited a collection of bronze portraits at All Hallows by the Tower:
Elton John, Rod Stewart, Christopher Biggins, Robin Maugham, Alec Waugh - various other celebrities - founder of the labour National History Museum, Henry Fry.
He then returned to writing with his next play, Angel of the Sun which later became The Sabre’s Edge - a powerful piece set in an asylum, inside the mind of the dancer Nijinsky. This time the sponsorship came via a grant from the Arts Council of Great Britain in their Arts 4 Everyone programme.
In 2008 Lawrence wrote, produced and directed a play centred around ‘the war on terror’ titled BLUE ON BLUE. The drama was performed at the Edinburgh Fringe festival and had a 5 star review from The Scotsman. Once again, a fragment of the work is available on YouTube: BLUE ON BLUE by William G Lawrence.
Lawrence has recently finished his biographical work titled: Lord Robin and his Lovers - Books & Crooks (The Lost Chronicles of ROBIN MAUGHAM). The book is about to be published on Kindle.
At present the writer is in the process of completing a musical play about the infamous pirate Captain Henry Morgan titled: MORGAN'S GHOST...
