Ashenden (or The British Agent)

Best know for his novels "Of Human Bondage" and "The Moon and Six Pence", Maugham also wrote short stories and plays. Having spent his first 10 years in Paris and later studied in Heidelberg, he was fluent in several European languages, and in 1897 graduated in medicine from St Thomas's Hospital Medical School in London. Although he never practiced medicine, he credited his experience for exposure to "life in the raw", which he later incorporated in his writings. Like Ian Fleming, he was a Briti