Escape From The Shadows
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Escape From The Shadows is the 1972 autobiography of Robin Maugham, later the 2nd Viscount Maugham.
The title Escape From The Shadows refers to three huge shadows over Maugham’s life: his famous father, his uncle, the writer W. Somerset Maugham, and his homosexuality.
The book opens with the young Robin admiring the beauty of a fourteen-year-old local lad. The first part of the book concentrates on Maugham’s school days at Highfield House and Eton College. Aged ten, Robin falls in love with Haines, a twelve-year-old at Prep school and invites him home for the weekend, but Haines teases him. He also describes the night-time activities of paedophile Prep School masters: Mr Merrick, who delights in giving 'extra tuition' to Hewson and Mr Rudge who befriends and abuses Neal. Maugham goes to stay with Neal and discovers that Neal has arranged for Mr Rudge to give him extra tutoring in the holidays. Neal boasts how he can summon Mr Rudge into his bed any time he wants.
Maugham doesn’t participate in any of these sexual activities until he is aged fourteen and at Eton. There he has sex with a Drew, a boy his own age. He also comes into contact with Mr Morrison, a paedophile gunsmith. Maugham meets Ronnie, a fourteen-year-old boy at Mr Morrison’s and assumes he is the man’s son until he discovers Ronnie almost naked on a double bed above the shop, with Ronnie assuming that Mr Morrison would get Maugham to make a threesome.
After school, Maugham is predominantly homosexual with a preference for boys aged sixteen plus, including rent boys, though he never engages in sexual activities with under-age boys. He becomes friends with the self-proclaimed paedophile Michael Davidson, whose autobiography, The World, The Flesh and Myself, proclaims his love for boys.
