Best Short Stories

William Somerset Maugham was born at the British Embassy in Paris in 1874 into a family of lawyers. Orphaned at ten and exiled to an indifferent uncle and hated boarding school in Kent, he escaped briefly to Heidelberg University, where he discovered literature, love and his urge to write. He qualified as a doctor in London, exploiting his medical experiences not to practise but to pen a sensational novel, Liza of Lambeth, that launched his career. There followed a long and extraordinary life in