Ashenden

July 7, 2021 8:55 AM

Ashenden, or The British Agent is a Somerset Maugham novel published in 1928, loosely based on his experiences during World War I. In 1991 the BBC created an adaptation of four of the stories.

1. The Dark Woman
2. The Traitor
3. Mr. Harrington's Washing (featuring Rene Auberjonois)
4. The Hairless Mexican

(I thought episodes 2 and 4 were the standouts.)

posted by wittgenstein (14 comments total)

British writers recounting their days as spies is my jam. There are so many of them! Probably a good thing since the Cold War was one of the greatest works of narrative fiction in the history of civilization. Thanks for posting this.
posted by mecran01 at 9:02 AM on July 7, 2021 [4 favorites]

All of Somerset Maugham is worth reading. Wonderfully paced, highly satisfying, worldly-wise stories. Be warned, however, his most famous book, "The Razor's Edge", is far from his best. The Ashenden stories fall in the middle, which makes them quite good indeed.
posted by Modest House at 9:03 AM on July 7, 2021 [3 favorites]

Oh, how cool. I didn't realize these had TV adaptations! I loved the book. I'll have to see the TV take on some of these.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 9:06 AM on July 7, 2021

I have a copy of this novel, because Maugham is among my favorite storytellers. I've just never gotten around to it. Thanks for this post to prompt me.
posted by OHenryPacey at 9:14 AM on July 7, 2021

Modest House - Part of what led me to post this was reading a collection of Maugham short stories, which I loved. This reminded me of how much I had liked Ashenden when I read it years ago, and then I wondered if the stories had ever been adapted for Television.

Anyway, what do you recommend as Maugham's best?
posted by wittgenstein at 9:34 AM on July 7, 2021

the Cold War was one of the greatest works of narrative fiction in the history of civilization.

Thank you very much, this phrase brings me great pleasure this grey morning!
posted by Pembquist at 9:41 AM on July 7, 2021 [4 favorites]

Whoa, cool! I’m excited to read/watch this. Thanks for posting.
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 11:47 AM on July 7, 2021

Plenty of sentences in those stories to just roll around and revel in. A favorite if mine:


"Ashenden had good enough cards, but the General seemed notwithstanding always to have better. Ashenden kept his eyes open and he was not careless of the possibility that his antagonist might correct the inequalities of chance, but he saw nothing to suggest that everything was not above board. He lost game after game."
posted by Wretch729 at 3:37 PM on July 7, 2021

I read the book because one of its sections was the source material for the imo immensely great early Hitchcock film Secret Agent and enjoyed it fine. But I found myself wishing there was more in it about actual espionage. It's more about Ashenden's observing other characters in a literary way than about spycraft.
posted by bertran at 6:36 PM on July 7, 2021

I love Ian Bannen and Joss Ackland. Both also were in Tinker, Tailor, Solder, Spy. Ackland also appeared in A Murder of Quality with a young Christan Bale.
Thanks for this.
posted by clavdivs at 7:14 PM on July 7, 2021

If you don't feel comfortable accessing the Canadian public domain file at the beginning of this post, then US Amazon has a Kindle version for $2.

A quick scan of the reviews are all about its literary qualities, which is encouraging-- usually if an old work is poorly formatted for Kindle, a tour of the comments may turn that up and save you the trouble of buying it. You know what? I'll bite the bullet and be a test case and buy it and report back here if the formatting is acceptable. Two dollars for fun Maugham short stories is easy to justify.

Thank you for this great post! I like Maugham, and had forgotten about this one. I'm looking forward to reading it for the first time.
posted by seasparrow at 12:17 AM on July 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

I found that book in Grandfather's book collection when I was a kid. Enjoyed it very much as I did most of Maugham's work. Looking forward to viewing. Thanks for this!
posted by james33 at 4:34 AM on July 8, 2021

Kindle formatting follow-up report: No problems! Which is a relief. Amazon is full of public domain works very poorly formatted and not worth any purchase price because of bad OCR or no paragraph/page breaks.

Only tiny thing is that there are a few really long paragraphs-- like the whole page long. I can't honestly tell if this is because the conversion is missing some line breaks or if it is an artifact of Maugham's prose style. Anyway, it doesn't interfere at all with my ability to read and enjoy.

And it's good-- really good. Wishing Ian Fleming and Tom Clancy read and learned from this. The stories are as good as James Bond or Jack Ryan but the writing is so much better.
posted by seasparrow at 7:36 AM on July 8, 2021 [2 favorites]

OK, I'd love to hear thoughts on the third story, "Miss King." It's brilliantly written, each character sketched in just a few sentences but fully realized. Is the theme that the work of an intelligence officer is full of mysteries and dead ends? Yes, certainly. But what else? I'd really like to hear other opinions and reactions to this one, because it lingers with me and won't let go of my brain.
posted by seasparrow at 9:13 AM on July 22, 2021