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Ashenden: Or, The British Agent by W.…
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Ashenden: Or, The British Agent (original 1928; edition 1943)

by W. Somerset Maugham (Author)

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1,0173320,145 (3.73)79
This is a compelling, although rather chilly, collection of loosely connected short stories following the intelligence work of Ashenden, a writer turned spy for the British government during World War I. The stories are based on Maugham's own work during the war and are frequently cited as a main influence on the character of James Bond. Ashenden (and, probably, Maugham) has an approach to spy work that is both playful and serious. He brings a writer's power of observation to his interactions with intelligence agents, fellow spies (both friendly and unfriendly), and targets. His descriptions of characters are evocative and detailed, sometimes funny, and (as you might imagine) occasionally more than a little racist and sexist. The plots sometimes get bogged down in the parade of closely observed characters, but are generally paced well. I'm not sure why Maugham decided to end the collection with the story that he did, but my goodness this thing has a rough ending. Maugham was one of the most popular writers of the 20s and 30s, and this is a good time capsule of that style. Worth reading, but probably not essential unless you are a spy novel type. ( )
  kristykay22 | Nov 12, 2020 |
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Just a straight classic of early spy genre writing. So good. ( )
  BooksForDinner | Mar 8, 2024 |
The Agent Runner in WWI
Review of the Arni Books Kindle eBook edition (April 6, 2023) of the original Heinemann hardcover (1927)

Ashenden's official existence was as orderly and monotonous as a city clerk's. He saw his spies at stated intervals and paid them their wages; when he could get hold of a new one he engaged him, gave him his instructions and sent him off to Germany;


I became intrigued by W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) while reading Tan Twan Eng's historical fiction The House of Doors (2023) where the author is shown in 1921 Penang, Malaya gathering real life stories which were later fictionalized into the short story collection The Casuarina Tree (1926). I didn't want to jump into the latter until I had finished Eng's book [RTC] but I have had Ashenden on my TBR for the longest time, so I read it first.

Ashenden (1927) is of interest as it is quite the early precedent for the 1960s & later cynical spy novels of John le Carré, Len Deighton and others. Ashenden is a fictionalized version of Maugham himself, who did actually work for the British Secret Service in Switzerland and Russia during the First World War. The writer Ashenden is recruited as an agent runner by R, an otherwise nameless chief in British Intelligence. As mentioned in the above excerpt he is mostly just acting as a handler, paying off the actual spies and relaying messages. The assignments all end in failure with misunderstandings, botched assassinations, and bungled attempts at manipulation.

See full dustcover at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d9/Ashenden%E2%80%94first_edition_co...
Dustcover of the 1927 original Heinemann hardcover. Image sourced from Wikipedia and may be found at the following website: http://www.facsimiledustjackets.com/cgi-bin/fdj455/2315.html?id=mVxIWhnP., Fair use, Link.

I read one of the public domain Kindle eBook editions of which there are many. The book is in the public domain in Canada (perhaps not everywhere else) and can be read at Project Gutenberg or Faded Page. My edition has the original 16 chapters of the 1927 original. Some later editions group chapters together which are part of the same mission, resulting in 7 stories.

It may have been a bit of self-promotion, but Maugham later said that after the book was published Winston Churchill accused the author of contravening the Official Secrets Act, resulting in Maugham destroying 17 unpublished stories which presumably would have been a sequel.

Trivia and Link
Read an Analysis of Somerset Maugham's Ashenden (Note: Contains spoilers) by Nasrullah Mambrol, Literariness, May 8, 2022. ( )
1 vote alanteder | Nov 7, 2023 |
Quite an interesting collection of spy stories, all centered around Ashenden, openly based on Maugham himself who was a WWI spy. The stories flow into each other but could be read individually. Many unlikeable characters, colonial BS, racism, and antisemitism make some of the stories distasteful. Yet, overall I’m glad I read this. I’m intrigued by Maugham for some reason and I haven’t figured out why yet. ( )
  psalva | Aug 4, 2023 |
Because this is a WW1 spy story, I have shelved it under thriller-suspense but it is not actually either thrilling nor suspenseful. Ashenden, like Maugham himself, is a writer drafted into the Secret Service but his job is more one of observation than of danger or action. As Ashenden says:

"Being no more than a tiny rivet in a vast and complicated machine, he never had the advantage of seeing a completed action. He was concerned with the beginning or the end of it, perhaps, or with some incident in the middle, but what his own doings led to he had seldom a chance of discovering."

Thus the book is more a series of connected short stories than a single novel. Maugham's wonderful prose is a joy to read as usual. ( )
  leslie.98 | Jun 27, 2023 |
Ó, Britannia, melyek valának fegyvereid, melyekkel egykoron igába hajtottad a világot? Hűvös ész, fanyar humor és kifogástalan társasági viselkedés a koktélpartikon. Ashendennek mindez megadatott, és még valamivel több is: a káprázatos emberismeret. Ami tulajdonképpen szakmai követelmény nála, hiszen civilben író a szentem, de kitör az első világháború, a haza pedig szolgálni hívja, berukkol tehát hírszerzőnek*. Hisz ki lenne jobb hírszerző, mint egy író? Mind a ketten információkkal és félinformációkkal (valósággal és fantáziával) dolgoznak, csak amíg egyikük elegyíti a kettőt, a másikuk szétválasztaná. Szóval Ashenden a kémek Paradicsomába, Svájcba kerül (meg később máshová is), és keveri-kavarja, miközben ilyen-olyan figurákkal hozza össze a sors. Tőrőlmetszett kémnovellák, így, akinek szíve központi bugyrában székel a cselszövevények iránti vágy, jó eséllyel szeretni fogja őket. Ugyanakkor Maugham erőssége nem a csűrés-csavarás, hanem a jellemrajz és az erkölcsi konfliktusok ábrázolása, úgyhogy kapunk egészen káprázatosan felskiccelt, komplex szereplőket meg feloldhatatlan morális dilemmákat is, mindezt egy finom, elegáns atmoszférába ágyazva. Alapvetően ez az atmoszféra az, amitől végig jó volt nekem a kötetben: a békebeli európaiság leheletét érezni benne, amire elviselhetetlen súllyal nehezedik a háttérben zajló világégés, az a világégés, ami aztán pozdorjává is zúzta a fenn említett békebeliséget. Úgy is felfoghatjuk tehát az írásokat, mint a Pax Britannica hattyúdalát, amit (talán) alá is húz, hogy az utolsó novella egy tüdőszanatóriumban játszódik.

Bírtam. Csak a legeslegutolsó bekezdésben Maugham – merőben indokolatlanul – ne vágta volna hozzám a giccsgránátot.

* Azt, hogy a hírszerzés afféle lelkes amatőrök vadászterülete, Maugham nem az ujjából szopta – valóban, még a második világháború idején is exhibicionisták, csodabogarak, kalandorok, egyszóval egy válogatott cirkuszi menazséria alkotta a kémek és kettős ügynökök derékhadát. Egy olyan furcsa és hihetetlen figura felbukkanása, mint a Csupasz Mexikói, egyáltalán nem irreális a regény terében – a brit titkosszolgálatok alkalmaztak nála groteszkebb figurákat is. ( )
1 vote Kuszma | Jul 2, 2022 |
Some brilliant bits, powerful,great character studies....but very dull passages too. ( )
  SarahKDunsbee | Aug 2, 2021 |
This is a collection of stories that draws heavily on Maugham’s experiences as a writer doing espionage work in Switzerland during the First World War. Some say that Ashenden, a sort of alter ego for Maugham, is the precursor to James Bond, but I found a bit more of le Carré in him, in the portrayal of sad, desperate people scrabbling to get their secrets sold and save their skins.

There were moments of comedy—the Odd Couple pairing of Ashenden and Mr. Harrington had me definitely on Team Ashenden—and moments of pathetic sadness, as in the story the ambassador told Ashenden about “a friend” who wasted his youth by chasing after a dancer and then marrying a woman he grew to despise. I liked the Switzerland part of the book best, then the Russian part, even though I felt Ashenden to be a bit out of character when falling for Anastasia.

I’d cautiously recommend this if you like early 20th-century stories and particularly if you want to explore the earliest spy stories. ( )
1 vote rabbitprincess | Feb 18, 2021 |
This is a compelling, although rather chilly, collection of loosely connected short stories following the intelligence work of Ashenden, a writer turned spy for the British government during World War I. The stories are based on Maugham's own work during the war and are frequently cited as a main influence on the character of James Bond. Ashenden (and, probably, Maugham) has an approach to spy work that is both playful and serious. He brings a writer's power of observation to his interactions with intelligence agents, fellow spies (both friendly and unfriendly), and targets. His descriptions of characters are evocative and detailed, sometimes funny, and (as you might imagine) occasionally more than a little racist and sexist. The plots sometimes get bogged down in the parade of closely observed characters, but are generally paced well. I'm not sure why Maugham decided to end the collection with the story that he did, but my goodness this thing has a rough ending. Maugham was one of the most popular writers of the 20s and 30s, and this is a good time capsule of that style. Worth reading, but probably not essential unless you are a spy novel type. ( )
  kristykay22 | Nov 12, 2020 |
I'm surprised that it took me so long to find my way to Ashenden or the British Agent, W. Somerset Maugham's espionage tales rooted in his own experiences of the First World War. Having read it now, I can see its ideas, tropes, and styles revived in all of the key Cold War spy novels I've read, including those by Deighton and Fleming. Even Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana is something of an expanded and reoriented take on the "Gustav" story in Ashenden. Curiously, this 1928 book set two generations earlier than the Cold War foreshadows it by concluding with the English spy's firsthand view of the October Revolution.

The protagonist Ashenden is somewhat modeled on the author, so he is a literary man recruited into the British intelligence service. He spends much of the book in neutral Switzerland, where he writes a play while supported by his spy work. Ashenden is valued by his organization as a judge of character more than a man of action. As a result, the book teems with diverse and carefully-drawn personalities. There is a good deal of humor, all of it very dry.

There is an acute awareness of the nature of intelligence work as being that of a cog in a machine, never seeing the ultimate origins or outcomes of one's labors, and this sensibility has an impact on the structure and pacing of the book. The stories are brief. Each has a dramatic unity of its own, and they are in chronological sequence, but there is no sense of a grand plot arc embracing the book as a whole. Often, the question that a tale seems to have been posing with increasing intensity throughout finally goes unanswered--for the reader, if not for Ashenden himself.
5 vote paradoxosalpha | Feb 21, 2019 |
This is volume three of Maugham's collected short stories. In this volume he has placed his stories that have the same protagonist, Ashendan, who is recruited to move to Switzerland where he will be a contact for British agents and an observer of German agents. In some of the incidents, he is successful but in others he or his assistants fail.

In "The Traitor" he must entice a German agent to leave the safety of Switzerland to go to England where he will be arrested and shot for being a traitor. As he becomes close to the man, he almost hopes he is not successful in tricking him.

In Mr. Harrington's Washing" he travels across Russia by train in the days leading up to the Revolution accompanied by an American salesman. They are Petrograd when the Bolsheviks take over. The American refuses to believe he is in danger and refuses to leave until he gets his clothes back from the laundry which turns out to be deadly mistake.

Maugham claimed that working in the Secret Service was mostly boring and that these stories were based on his experiences as an agent. ( )
  lamour | Mar 31, 2018 |
Collection of stories strung together about a man who was a collector of information, though he did get near the action on occasion. Like with the Hairless Mexican who was a killer who also thought women adored him, or the Russian patriot who delighted in extremes, or the British ambassador who told his story of wild untempered love that he had regretfully abandoned. The narrator is mainly an observer of humankind, though at times he gets drawn unwittingly into other people lives. ( )
  triciareads55 | Jan 9, 2018 |
Because this is a WW1 spy story, I have shelved it under thriller-suspense but it is not actually either thrilling or suspenseful. Ashenden, like Maugham himself, is a writer drafted into the Secret Service but his job is more one of observation than of danger or action. As Ashenden says:

"Being no more than a tiny rivet in a vast and complicated machine, he never had the advantage of seeing a completed action. He was concerned with the beginning or the end of it, perhaps, or with some incident in the middle, but what his own doings led to he had seldom a chance of discovering."

Thus the book is more a series of connected short stories than a single novel. Maugham's wonderful prose is a joy to read as usual. ( )
1 vote leslie.98 | Oct 24, 2017 |
It's easy to see why this one is considered an archetype of espionage fiction. The fact that the book was first published back in the late 1920s means that some of the dialogue and narrative will appear dated and awkward by contemporary standards, but the tale of a British spy operating on the continent during World War I remains a classic. Alfred Hitchcock was behind a movie based on parts of the story, but I could just as easily see it being tackled by Orson Welles in his prime. A fun and interesting read throughout, with only a few minor pacing missteps, and with a memorable ending. ( )
  jimgysin | Jun 19, 2017 |
Beautifully written. Perfectly unexciting. It's really more a series of vignettes or short stories rather than a singular story arc. Maugham spends more time on details surrounding the action itself. As he says in his preface, "fact is a poor story teller." In this case, he conveys the fact and truth of intelligence work: more often than not, necessary but not very exciting. ( )
  traumleben | Mar 4, 2017 |
I enjoyed reading this book; but I'm not sure I will want to reread it. Maugham's style is eminently readable and he is very clever.

I can imagine that if I had read it when it was first published I would have been very impressed with the style and the details about spying in a foreign country. It is really a collection of almost independent stories, with a framing device of the intelligence work of the agent Ashenden.

Here is one of my favorite paragraphs: "Ashenden sighed, for the water was no longer quite so hot; he could not reach the tap with his hand nor could he turn it with his toes (as every properly regulated tap should turn) and if he got up enough to add more hot water he might just as well get out altogether. On the other hand he could not pull out the plug with his foot in order to empty the bath and so force himself to get out, nor could he find in himself the will-power to step out of it like a man. He had often heard people tell him that he possessed character and he reflected that people judge hastily in the affairs of life because they judge on insufficient evidence: they had never seen him in a hot, but diminishingly hot, bath."

Overall, I recommend the novel if you have never read Maugham and want an easy introduction. ( )
  eowynfaramir | Aug 20, 2016 |
A favorite of mine because it introduced me to Maugham. Loosely based on Maugham's own experiences as a British spy, the stories ring true in revealing the rather banal aspects of what it's really like. ( )
  dbsovereign | Jan 26, 2016 |
This 1960 Avon cover with a pistol and a young women is clearly trying to make this a James Bond story but it is nothing like Bond --the stories are realistically sordid and prosaic accounts based on Maugham's own experience as a British agent in World War I ( )
  antiquary | Aug 16, 2015 |
[Preface to Ashenden, Heinemann, The Collected Edition, 1934:]

This book is found on my experiences in the Intelligence Department during the war, but rearranged for the purposes of fiction. Fact is a poor story-teller. It starts a story at haphazard, generally long before the beginning, rambles on inconsequentially and tails off, leaving loose ends hanging about, without a conclusion. It works up to an interesting situation, and then leaves it in the air to follow an issue that has nothing to do with the point; it has no sense of climax and whittles away its dramatic effects in irrelevance. There is a school of novelists that looks upon this as the proper model of fiction. If life, they say, is arbitrary and disconnected, why, fiction should not be so too; for fiction should imitate life. […] They give you the materials for a dish and expect you to do the cooking yourself. Now this is one way like another of writing stories and some very good stories have been written in it. Chekov used it with mastery.

[…]

For it is quite unnecessary to treat as axiomatic the assertion that fiction should imitate life. It is merely a literary theory like another. There is in fact a second theory that is just as plausible, and this is that fiction should use life merely as raw material which it arranges in ingenious patterns.
[…]
The method of which I speak is that which chooses from life what is curious, telling and dramatic; it does not seek to copy life, but keeps to it closely enough not to shock the reader into disbelief; it leaves out this and changes that; it makes a formal decoration out of such of the facts as it has found convenient to deal with and presents a picture, the result of artifice, which, because it represents the author’s temperament, is to a certain extent a portrait of himself, but which is designed to excite, interest and absorb the reader. If it is a success he accepts it as true.

I have written all this in order to impress upon the reader that this book is a work of fiction, though I should say not much more so than several of the books on the same subject that have appeared during the last few years and that purport to be truthful memoirs. The work of an agent in the Intelligence Department is on the whole extremely monotonous. A lot of it is uncommonly useless. The material it offers for stories is scrappy and pointless; the author has himself to make it coherent, dramatic and probable.

[Preface to Ashenden, Doubleday, 1941:]

I have heard it suggested that the service is less efficiently conducted than it was when I was a very obscure and insignificant member of it, but whether this is so I have no means of telling. The circumstances are different and I daresay more difficult to deal with. At that time the nationals of neutral countries were allowed considerable liberty of movement and it was possible by their means to get much useful information; but now, taught presumably by past experience, the authorities are watchful and it would go ill with any alien who displayed unreasonable curiosity.

[…]

Though twenty years have passed since these stories were written I cannot think they are entirely out of date, since till quite recently, I am told, they have been required reading for persons entering the Department; and early in this war Dr Goebbels, speaking over the air, taking one of them as a literal statement of recent facts, gave it as an example of British cynicism and brutality.

But it is not for any topical interest they may have, nor because they have been used as a sort of textbook, that I now offer to the public a new edition of these stories. They purpose only to offer entertainment, which I still think, impenitently, is the main object of a work of fiction.
1 vote WSMaugham | Jun 15, 2015 |
“To drink a glass of sherry when you can get a dry Martini is like taking a stage-coach when you can travel by the Orient Express.” (p. 225-226)

Few literary sources are mentioned to explain Ian Fleming's creation of James Bond, although Eric Ambler's spy novels, published in the late-30s and onwards are sometimes mentioned. Another worthy contender would be Ashenden, or, The British agent by W. Somerset Maugham.

The truth behind the story is astonishing enough. In 1914, W. Somerset Maugham was recruited by the British Secret Service to stay in Switzerland, posing to work on a play, and in this disguise execute his work a a liaison and spy. The stories in Ashenden, or, The British agent are based on Somerset Maugham's own experience as an agent. The main character, modeled on the author, is an aristocratic, suave gentleman, ruthless enough to face blackmail, interrogation and murder, in the service of the Motherland.

Somerset Maugham cleverly borrowed Conan-Doyle's formula of a collection of loosely connected stories that each form an episode around the main character on an ongoing mission, similar to the The adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
John Ashenden might as well be the model for James Bond, perhaps a bit more aristocratic. Another similarity, is that, like in the James Bond novels, the chief of the secret service is never named other than merely by the use of an initial, thus Colonel R.

Ashenden, or, The British agent breathes the atmosphere of Conrad's Under Western eyes, in which foreign operatives, with long, foreign-sounding names meet in obscure hostels, plotting and conspiring to do mischief. The stories are not as exciting as later spy novels in the genre, but Maugham does bring an intriguing cast of characters together, Russian, Mexican and Indian, with characters such the hairless Mexican, The dark woman, or Giulia Lazzari.

Ashenden, or, The British agent was written and published in 1928, but based on Somerset Maugham experience during the Great War. It is a book that offers a different perspective of the First World War. ( )
1 vote edwinbcn | Jan 1, 2015 |
The writing is excellent but the stories conveyed very little. The television mini-series was in some ways more interesting...but also more casually plotted. Also, while the stories didn't struggle to link individual events the episodes did, making them, at some points, a bit preposterous.

The book is interesting for its portrayal of the static nature of WWI. People travel in Europe, indeed in France, with no real apprehension that any armies will show up or that they will be shot up. Meanwhile, the war in the trenches goes on, killing everybody of the appropriate age. In contrast, tt seems that WWII more or less saturated all Europe with its violence. ( )
1 vote themulhern | Jul 28, 2013 |
This is the best spy book I have read. And it is deemed to be the best spy book by more authors and book lists than I can count. It is a quiet book about a spy-master around WWI (written by an ex-spy), so don't go into it expecting James Bond. Go into it expecting a more true-to-life depiction of what it is (or was) like to be a spy. But if you are not put off by quiet books, and can separate real life from fiction, you will probably love it. Highly recommended. ( )
  tnilsson | Jan 25, 2013 |
Ashenden is a playwright who works for the British secret service as a spy in Europe during WWI. It’s based on Maugham’s own experiences. This is billed these days as a novel, but it’s also been published as Volume 3 of the short stories of W. Somerset Maugham. Ashenden is detached and sophisticated. He meets with shady characters who provide information, unmasks frauds and lures enemy agents to their deaths. There’s no plot as such, except in the individual stories, or some times in a series of 2 or 3 stories. The organization is chronological, with the last story about a mission to subvert the Russian Revolution, which happens too quickly for Ashenden to get his ducks in order. Reputedly the character of Ashenden inspired Ian Fleming’s creation of James Bond.Quirky characters are the interest in this book. There’s Chandra Lal, an Indian revolutionary working on the German side, whom Ashenden lures to his death using his lover as bait. There’s the “hairless Mexican” who’s an assassin hired by Ashenden’s boss, R., the head of the Secret Service. There’s Ashenden’s ex-lover, Anastasia Alexandrovna whom he meets again in Moscow and John Quincy Harrington, a naïve American businessman whom Ashenden meets on the Trans-Siberia railway to Moscow to get business contracts signed. ( )
1 vote fourbears | Apr 24, 2010 |
Maugham wrote amazing short stories, and lived an amazing life. In this volume he recounts some of his adventures during the First World War, when he lived something of a charmed life in France, Switzerland, America and Russia. As always, his stories touch on concepts of love and loss and the fundamental lack of mutual understanding that so often plagues relationships. ( )
  soylentgreen23 | Jan 1, 2010 |
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