Robin Maugham, 2nd Viscount Maugham

Robert Cecil Romer Maugham, 2nd Viscount Maugham (17 May 1916 – 13 March 1981), known as Robin Maugham, was a British novelist, playwright and travel writer.

Contents

Early life

Robin Maugham was the son of Frederic Maugham, 1st Viscount Maugham, and Helen Romer. He was born into a legal dynasty and was expected to follow his father and grandfather and devote himself to the law. Although he qualified as a barrister he realised that his real calling was to follow his uncle William Somerset Maugham as a writer.

Personal and family life

Described as "defiantly homosexual", but in fact bisexual, Lord Maugham never married, and the viscountcy became extinct upon his death. He died from an embolism, though an official cause of death was difficult to obtain as his body was apparently lost for forty-eight hours after his death. He had three sisters: Kate, Honor, and the novelist Diana Marr-Johnson (1908–2007). He is buried in Hartfield, Sussex, next to his parents.

Maugham bought the merchant ship MV Joyita as a hulk in the early 1960s, writing about the mystery of the incident in his book The Joyita Mystery (1962). The ship had been lost at sea only to reappear five weeks later after a massive search found nothing, without crew or passengers, and with four tons of cargo missing.

He wrote an autobiography, Escape from the Shadows (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1972), and then a sequel Search for Nirvana (1975) and books about his uncle, as well as many other novels and plays.

Films

His first three novels were filmed: The Servant by Joseph Losey in 1963, Line on Ginger by Guy Hamilton in 1953, and The Rough and the Smooth by Robert Siodmak in 1959.

Works

Novels

  • The Servant (1948)
  • Line on Ginger (1949)
  • The Rough and the Smooth (1951)
  • Behind the Mirror (1955)[1]
  • The Man With Two Shadows (1958)
  • November Reef (1962)
  • The Green Shade (1966)
  • The Second Window (1968)
  • The Link; a Victorian mystery (1969)
  • The Wrong People (1970)
  • The Last Encounter (1972)
  • The Barrier (1973)
  • The Black Tent and other stories (Book published: 1972 - The Black Tent was made into a film in 1956 - set in North Africa post WWII – a romantic drama starring Anthony Steel, Donald Sinden and Anna-Maria Sandri, directed by Brian Desmond Hurst)
  • The Sign (1974)
  • Knock on Teak (1976)
  • Lovers in Exile (1977)
  • The Dividing Line (1978)
  • The Corridor (1980)
  • Refuge (1980-unpublished)
  • The Deserters (1981)

Biography and travel

  • Come To Dust (1945)
  • Nomad (1947)
  • Approach to Palestine (1947)
  • North African Notebook (1948)
  • Journey to Siwa (1950)
  • The Slaves of Timbuktu (1961)
  • The Joyita Mystery (1962)
  • Somerset and All the Maughams (1966)
  • Escape from the Shadows (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1972): his autobiography
  • Search for Nirvana (1975): his autobiography, continued
  • Conversations with Willie (1978)
  • Willie (1979)

Plays, speeches, television and radio

References

  1. ^ John Betjeman, Daily Telegraph: ‘Robin Maugham can write ... the sincerity of the author and his gift of narrative and brief[ly], certain powers of describing a scene, character make him a fiction addict's delight.’

External links

Peerage of England
Preceded by
Frederic Maugham		 Viscount Maugham
1958–1981		 Extinct