Published by Vintage Classics, part of Vintage Publishing
Format: Paperback
£8.99
Author:
W Somerset Maugham
Format: Paperback
EAN: 9780099286851
£8.99
Available for dispatch within 1-2 working days
EAN: 9780099286851
Published: 4 Nov 2010
At the age of twenty-three, Charlie Mason is endowed with good looks, good manners and a happy disposition. Following three years at Cambridge and one in his father's business, he is now looking forward to a jaunt in Paris with Simon Fenimore, his oldest friend.Yet Paris is not what he expects. And in just a few days his young eyes are opened to the horror and ugly drama of its underworld.Published before the outbreak of war in 1939, Maugham's purpose in Christmas Holiday was to warn the complacent, insular British middle-class of the immense upheavals taking place on the Continent.
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Contrasts the complacency of prewar Britain with the nastiness of what was brewing on the Continent. It remains effortlessly readable
- The Times
Brilliant
- New York Times
One reads it with a feeling of increasing respect for his mastery of the trade. One has the same delight as in watching a first-class cabinet-maker cutting dovetails
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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
