Eight full-cast dramatisations and readings

The Somerset Maugham BBC Radio Collection

A collection of the BBC’s dramatisations and readings of W Somerset Maugham’s fiction, with star casts including Alex Jennings, Dirk Bogarde, and Janet Maw.

BBC Radio 4 dramatisations and readings of Somerset Maugham's fiction - plus bonus programme Replay: Somerset Maugham 
 
William Somerset Maugham was one of the most successful English writers of the 20th Century, and remains the most adapted for film and TV. This collection includes eight of his novels, plays and short stories, as heard on BBC radio, as well as an illuminating interview with the author himself. 
 
The Moon and Sixpence - Respectable stockbroker Charles Strickland abandons his wife and children to live as a painter in Paris and Tahiti. Starring Ronald Pickup and Patrick Allen. 
 
The Painted Veil - First published in 1925 to a storm of protest, this is a haunting, poignant tale of one woman's spiritual awakening. Starring Sarah Smart and Nicholas Farrell. 
 
The Sacred Flame- Invalided following an air crash, Maurice is determined to remain cheerful. But his condition affects all those who are close to him. Starring Julian Glover, Wendy Hiller, Hannah Gordon and Janet Maw. 
 
Ashenden, Gentleman Spy - Ashenden, a writer by profession, returns from the First World War and is offered a position in the Secret Service. Five short stories based on Maugham's own wartime experiences, read byAlex Jennings. 
 
For Services Rendered- In this incisive state-of-the nation play, it is 1932, and the progressive Ardsley family seem to be managing their lives very well. But in reality, each of them is fighting for survival. Starring David Calder, Sian Thomas and Louise Brealey. 
 
The Narrow Corner - Sailing home from the East Indies, a doctor and his two companions are forced to seek shelter on the island of Kanda - where they encounter the beautiful, sultry Louise... Starring Garard Green, Owen Scott, Douglas Blackwell and Cara Kelly. 
 
Christmas Holiday - 1938, and Charley is looking forward to spending Christmas in Paris with his old school friend, Simon. But they are both ignorant of the storm clouds lowering over Europe... Starring Peter Rumney and Anthony Daniels. 
 
The Razor's Edge - After the First World War, Larry Darrell returns to Chicago but finds it difficult to fit back into society. To the dismay of his fiancée, Isabel, he heads for Paris and embarks on a spiritual quest. StarringNicholas Le Prevost, John Light and Megan Dodds. 
 
Replay: Somerset Maugham - Philip French presents an archive interview with Somerset Maugham, recorded in 1954 on the occasion of his 80th birthday. 
 
©2020 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd (P)2020 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

BBC Radio 4 dramatisations and readings of Somerset Maugham's fiction - plus bonus programme Replay: Somerset Maugham 
 
William Somerset Maugham was one of the most successful English writers of the 20th Century, and remains the most adapted for film and TV. This collection includes eight of his novels, plays and short stories, as heard on BBC radio, as well as an illuminating interview with the author himself. 
 
The Moon and Sixpence - Respectable stockbroker Charles Strickland abandons his wife and children to live as a painter in Paris and Tahiti. Starring Ronald Pickup and Patrick Allen. 
 
The Painted Veil - First published in 1925 to a storm of protest, this is a haunting, poignant tale of one woman's spiritual awakening. Starring Sarah Smart and Nicholas Farrell. 
 
The Sacred Flame- Invalided following an air crash, Maurice is determined to remain cheerful. But his condition affects all those who are close to him. Starring Julian Glover, Wendy Hiller, Hannah Gordon and Janet Maw. 
 
Ashenden, Gentleman Spy - Ashenden, a writer by profession, returns from the First World War and is offered a position in the Secret Service. Five short stories based on Maugham's own wartime experiences, read byAlex Jennings. 
 
For Services Rendered- In this incisive state-of-the nation play, it is 1932, and the progressive Ardsley family seem to be managing their lives very well. But in reality, each of them is fighting for survival. Starring David Calder, Sian Thomas and Louise Brealey. 
 
The Narrow Corner - Sailing home from the East Indies, a doctor and his two companions are forced to seek shelter on the island of Kanda - where they encounter the beautiful, sultry Louise... Starring Garard Green, Owen Scott, Douglas Blackwell and Cara Kelly. 
 
Christmas Holiday - 1938, and Charley is looking forward to spending Christmas in Paris with his old school friend, Simon. But they are both ignorant of the storm clouds lowering over Europe... Starring Peter Rumney and Anthony Daniels. 
 
The Razor's Edge - After the First World War, Larry Darrell returns to Chicago but finds it difficult to fit back into society. To the dismay of his fiancée, Isabel, he heads for Paris and embarks on a spiritual quest. StarringNicholas Le Prevost, John Light and Megan Dodds. 
 
Replay: Somerset Maugham - Philip French presents an archive interview with Somerset Maugham, recorded in 1954 on the occasion of his 80th birthday. 
 
©2020 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd (P)2020 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

Plays Volume One

The first volume of Maugham's collected plays, which includes his most popular comedies and melodramas

Maugham has given infinite pleasure and left us a splendour of writing which will remain for as long as the written English word is permitted to exist

A formidable talent, a formidable sum of talents...precision, tact, irony and total absence of pomposity

A shrewd, still-relevant examination of women's roles, the nature of love and the manners and mores of marriage

William Somerset Maugham, famous as novelist, playwright and short-story writer, was born in 1874, and lived in Paris until he was ten. He was educated at King's School, Canterbury, and at Heidelberg University. He spent some time at St. Thomas' Hospital with a view to practising medicine, but the success of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, published in 1897, won him over to letters. Of Human Bondage, the first of his masterpieces, came out in 1915, and with the publication in 1919 of The Moon and Sixpence his reputation as a novelist was established. His position as a successful playwright was being consolidated at the same time. His first play, A Man of Honour, was followed by a series of successes just before and after World War I, and his career in the theatre did not end until 1933 with Sheppey. 
 
His fame as a short story writer began with The Trembling of a Leaf, subtitled Little Stories of the South Sea Islands, in 1921, after which he published more than ten collections. His other works include travel books such as On a Chinese Screen, and Don Fernando, essays, criticism, and the autobiographical The Summing Up and A Writer's Notebook. 
 
In 1927, he settled in the south of France, and lived there until his death in 1965.

In his day, W. Somerset Maugham was most celebrated as a playwright, and the breadth of his ability is manifested in this collection of his most popular plays. Included here are the noirish mystery The Sacred Flame, the hilarious satires The Circle, The Constant Wife, and Our Betters, and the sharp-witted drama Sheppey. Whether suspenseful or acerbically witty, these plays take a sly look at the idiosyncrasies and hypocrisies of their time.

Plays Volume Two

This second volume of Maugham's collected plays shows the range of his talent, from sparkling comedies about the marriage state to powerfully tense dramas of sexual passion

Maugham had few equals among his contemporaries

Witty, comedic and engrossing, this second collection showcases the range of W. Somerset Maugham’s talent as a playwright. The delightful satires of marriage Lady Frederick and Home and Beauty are included here alongside the insightful war drama For Services Rendered, and Maugham's tense colonial drama The Letter. Eclectic in theme and sardonic in style, these plays are masterpieces of English social comedy and melodrama.

Of Human Bondage

The finest editions available of the world's greatest classics from Homer to Achebe, Tolstoy to Ishiguro, Proust to Pullman, printed on a fine acid-free, cream-wove paper that will not discolour with age, with sewn, full cloth bindings and silk ribbon markers, and at remarkably low prices. All books include substantial introductions by major scholars and contemporary writers, and comparative chronologies of literary and historical context.

Set at the end of the nineteenth century, Maugham’s semi-autobiographical novel is an unforgettable portrait of Philip Carey, an orphan with a club foot, desperate for knowledge and experience, as he struggles to find his way in a world that is as rigid as it is unforgiving.

In Aspects of the Novel, E.M. Forster wrote: "The final test of a novel will be our affection for it, as it is the test of our friends, of anything else that we cannot define." He might have been writing about W. Somerset Maugham's masterpiece, Of Human Bondage.

I do not know of any living writer who seems to have his work so much under control.

A deeply imagined and powerfully moving novel.

Maugham, who usually cultivated a fastidious detachment, shows in this work a personal commitment that was unusual, sweeping the reader up in his own passionate intensity.

W. Somerset Maugham (Author) William Somerset Maugham, famous as novelist, playwright and short-story writer, was born in 1874, and lived in Paris until he was ten. He was educated at King's School, Canterbury, and at Heidelberg University. He spent some time at St. Thomas' Hospital with a view to practising medicine, but the success of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, published in 1897, won him over to letters. Of Human Bondage, the first of his masterpieces, came out in 1915, and with the publication in 1919 of The Moon and Sixpence his reputation as a novelist was established. His position as a successful playwright was being consolidated at the same time. His first play, A Man of Honour, was followed by a series of successes just before and after World War I, and his career in the theatre did not end until 1933 with Sheppey. 
 
His fame as a short story writer began with The Trembling of a Leaf, subtitled Little Stories of the South Sea Islands, in 1921, after which he published more than ten collections. His other works include travel books such as On a Chinese Screen, and Don Fernando, essays, criticism, and the autobiographical The Summing Up and A Writer's Notebook. 
 
In 1927, he settled in the south of France, and lived there until his death in 1965. Selina Hastings (Introducer) Selina Hastings is a writer and journalist, biographer of Somerset Maugham, Evelyn Waugh, Nancy Mitford and Rosamund Lehmann and, in The Red Earl, of her father. 
 
She is the winner of the Marsh Biography Prize, the Spear's Award for Outstanding Achievement and the Biographers' Club Lifetime Services to Biography Award.

After a lonely boyhood, and the painful ordeal of his schooldays, Philip's yearning for adventure takes him to Germany and later Paris where he tries to make his mark as an artist before returning to London to study medicine. Here, a tortured and one-sided love affair with Mildred, a vulgar yet irresistible waitress, changes the course of his life for ever. 
 
Commenting later on the novel’s autobiographical aspects, Maugham recalled how in writing the book he mingled fact and fiction and 'found myself free from the pains and unhappy recollections that had tormented me'.However, like Dickens’s David Copperfield to which it is often compared, Of Human Bondage goes far beyond autobiography, and is Maugham’s most ambitious and unsparing novel, revealing the author’s undoubted gift for storytelling as he explores the timeless theme of human freedom - freedom to act, to think and to love.

Points of View

Another wide-ranging volume of essays from the prose master

One of the greatest yet least fashionable of all British writers

One of the finest (though now frequently overlooked) novelists and dramatists of the 20th century

William Somerset Maugham was born in 1874 and lived in Paris until he was ten. He was educated at King's School, Canterbury, and at Heidelberg University. He spent some time at St. Thomas' Hospital with the idea of practising medicine, but the success of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, published in 1897, won him over to literature. Of Human Bondage, the first of his masterpieces, came out in 1915, and with the publication in 1919 of The Moon and Sixpence his reputation as a novelist was established. At the same time his fame as a successful playwright and writer was being consolidated with acclaimed productions of various plays and the publication of several short story collections. His other works include travel books, essays, criticism and the autobiographical The Summing Up and A Writer's Notebook. In 1927 Somerset Maugham settled in the South of France and lived there until his death in 1965

Eclectic and illuminating, these essays are the last that Maugham published. Ranging from an appreciation of Goethe's novels, to an encounter with an Indian holy man, with a considered analysis of the form at which Maugham himself excelled - the short story - they present the enduring views and opinions of this eminent writer.

A Writer's Notebook

Maugham's working notebook, which he kept for most of his writing life, forms one of his most important pieces of work

One of the most cosmopolitan English writers

A never less than fascinating man, who managed to be a world citizen, spy, millionaire and, of course, well-loved author

William Somerset Maugham was born in 1874 and lived in Paris until he was ten. He was educated at King's School, Canterbury, and at Heidelberg University. He spent some time at St. Thomas' Hospital with the idea of practising medicine, but the success of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, published in 1897, won him over to literature. Of Human Bondage, the first of his masterpieces, came out in 1915, and with the publication in 1919 of The Moon and Sixpence his reputation as a novelist was established. At the same time his fame as a successful playwright and writer was being consolidated with acclaimed productions of various plays and the publication of several short story collections. His other works include travel books, essays, criticism and the autobiographical The Summing Up and A Writer's Notebook. In 1927 Somerset Maugham settled in the South of France and lived there until his death in 1965

From 1892, when he was eighteen, until 1949, when this book was first published, Somerset Maugham kept a notebook. It is without doubt one of his most important works. Part autobiographical, part confessional, packed with observations, confidences, experiments and jottings it is a rich and exhilarating admission into this great writer's workshop

W. Somerset Maugham

'She was a fool and he knew it and because he loved her it had made no difference' 
 
Kitty Fane is the beautiful but shallow wife of Walter, a bacteriologist stationed in Hong Kong. Unsatisfied by her marriage, she starts an affair with charming, attractive and exciting Charles Townsend. But when Walter discovers her deception, he exacts a strange and terrible vengeance: Kitty must accompany him to his new posting in remote mainland China, where a cholera epidemic rages... 
 
VINTAGE DECO: Nine blazing, daring novels to celebrate the 1920s - 100 years on.

W. Somerset Maugham

The Painted Veil

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