Viscount Robin Maugham

THE SERVANT

By late 1947 Robin Maugham had put together the last chapters of a taut compelling piece of literature that he titled: THE SERVANT. This was Robin Maugham’s most famous and successful work. It has been translated into dozens of languages all over the world. The book took the form of a novella of 20,000 words in all. It was about the darker side of class and sexual repression, set just after the Second World War – a dark time where the order of things had started to shift in a subterranean struggle that finally resulted in the social revolution of the sixties.

At its centre is the malignant influence of a manservant who takes over the life of a young English law student by providing him with his every desire. (Some years later it was adapted by Harold Pinter and made into an international prize-winning film, now set more obviously at the peak of the sexual revolution; but still firmly based on the author's novel and stage play). 

The Servant explores a recurring theme in Maugham’s work. It concerns the duplicity of human nature, the struggle for integration and the corrupting influences of those who inhabit his world. (Intertwined in Robin Maugham’s world are other similar connected strands that he revisits in later novels: the intense friendship between men at war; the demeaning results of misguided parents; the causes of sexual deviation). The Servant reveals his deft ability with a sparse and succinct narrative that seems to flow effortlessly from the pages. 

THE SERVANT: ‘A masterpiece of writing…skill and speed that the author's uncle might envy.’ New York Times.

NOTE

Recently republished by VALANCOURT BOOKS  with a new introduction by William Lawrence

(ref: William Lawrence - Books)

THE WRONG PEOPLE

In 1970 Heinemann published THE WRONG PEOPLE Robin Maugham's the first gay novel.  THE Sexual Offences Act became law in 1967. This permitted homosexual acts in private. However, the first notes for the book were written in 1958. The writer had put the manuscript under wraps for nearly ten years.

When Robin Maugham showed the manuscript to his uncle ‘Willie’ Somerset Maugham, he remarked "They will kill you." But it had been the first book he'd read from beginning to end without putting it down in many years.   

THE WRONG PEOPLE is centred on the character of Arnald Turner who finds gratification in the form of a young Moroccan boy, Riffi, who is supplied by a seedy Anglo American, Ewing Baird. But there is a price to pay. In return for Baird’s favour and with a sprinkling of blackmail and bribery, Turner must kidnap a young boy from the approved school where he works in England and smuggle him into Tangier. 

THE WRONG PEOPLE was originally published in the USA, 1967 under the pseudonym of David Griffin. Then in 1970 William Heinemann published a revised edition in the name of Robin Maugham.

NOTE

Recently republished by VALANCOURT BOOKS  with a new introduction by William Lawrence

(ref: William Lawrence - Books)