Ashenden, or The British Agent
Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1941. Later printing, possibly book club. Hardcover. 304 pages. DJ is worn, torn, chipped, soiled, and is price clipped. Endpapers discolored. Some page discoloration. Includes Preface, as well as probably the most expert stories of espionage ever written, based on Mr. Maugham's own experiences as a British agent during the First World War. This fascinating book, first published in 1928, is now officially required reading for persons entering the British Secret Service, and is accepted as literal fact by Dr. Goebbels. It contains probably the most expert stories of espionage ever written. They are based, of course, on Mr. Maugham's own experiences as a British agent during the First World War, but they were written, the author emphasizes in a preface especially written for this edition, purely as entertainment. They make wonderfully exciting reading, freshly significant in these times. William Somerset Maugham CH (25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965) was an English playwright, novelist, and short-story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and reputedly the highest-paid author during the 1930s.
Orphaned, he was raised by a paternal uncle. He did not want to become a lawyer like other men in his family, so he trained and qualified as a physician. His first novel Liza of Lambeth (1897) sold out so rapidly that Maugham gave up medicine to write full-time. During the First World War, he served with the Red Cross and in the ambulance corps before being recruited in 1916 into the British Secret Intelligence Service. He worked for the service in Switzerland and Russia before the October Revolution of 1917 in the Russian Empire. Maugham used his spying experiences as the basis for Ashenden: Or the British Agent, a collection of short stories about a gentlemanly, sophisticated, aloof spy. This character is considered to have influenced Ian Fleming's later series of James Bond novels. During WWI, a writer named Ashenden, introduced only by his last name, is enlisted as an agent through threats and promises by "R.", a Colonel with British Intelligence. He is sent to Switzerland where he becomes involved in a number of counter-intelligence operations; these he accomplishes by means of persuasion, bribery, blackmail, or coincidence. He does not use a weapon. In one, he accompanies a man called the Hairless Mexican to Italy, where they are to intercept important papers carried by an arriving Greek agent of the Germans. The Hairless Mexican meets the only Greek on the incoming ship, and during a search of the Greek's hotel room, the Hairless Mexican and Ashenden do not find any papers. As they prepare to leave the country, Ashenden decodes a cable which tells him that the intended Greek had never boarded the ship; spots of dried blood on the Hairless Mexican's sleeve mean that he had killed the wrong man. In another, Ashenden must induce an Italian dancer to betray her lover, an anti-British Indian and a German agent, by convincing him to cross the border from neutral Switzerland to see her in allied France, where the Allies can arrest him. The ironic denouement is that after the man is captured by the British, he commits suicide before he can be arrested, tried, and executed. When she finds out of his death, the dancer goes to Ashenden and asks to get back the valuable watch she had given to the man whom she has just betrayed. After a number of similar operations, Ashenden is sent to Imperial Russia during the 1917 revolution, as an "agent of influence", to do what he can to keep Russia in the war against Germany. He spends eleven days on the train from Vladivostok to Petrograd sharing a cabin with Harrington, an American business man who is a constant conversationalist. A few days after they arrive, the revolution breaks out in earnest. As they try to evacuate, the business man insists on getting back his laundry that had been sent out. During his return with the laundry, Harrington is killed in a street riot. The stories combine Maugham's talent at character detail with a tragic structure where an affecting and sometimes funny person is damaged in the game of national spying. Some regard these as the forerunner of spy fiction written by such as Eric Ambler, Graham Greene and books such as The Spy Who Came In From the Cold. Condition: Fair / Fair.
Keywords: British Secret Service, World War I, Spies, Espionage, Russian Revolution, Switzerland, Murder, Intrigue, British Intelligence, First World War, Deception
[Book #82346]
Price: $27.50