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STRICTLY PERSONAL by W. Somerset Maugham

STRICTLY PERSONAL

By

Pub Date: Sept. 5th, 1941
Publisher: Doubleday, Doran

Slight though this may be, the Maugham name guarantees a certain demand, and written with the facility, the live interest, the practised sense of detail one expects from him, it's thoroughly good reading. Here is a record of the ""small things that happened to me during the first fifteen months of the war"", a record which has appeared in part in the Saturday Evening Post and the Redbook. The book opens in Maugham's home on the Riviera at Cap Ferrst, and for the better part of the brief French struggle Maugham stayed in France, in Paris, in Nancy (behind the lines), and around the Riviera. He witnessed the French inactivity, the German infiltration of propaganda, the general tenor of inertia and corruption which was prevalent in all circles. Escape to England on a refugee-jammed, broken down collier. England, writing articles, interviewing no-tables, and a section on post-war England and the changes that will have to come. Most of this material is familiar, some is consequential, some inconsequential, but it's pleasant personal reading.