Robin Maugham was the son of Frederic Maugham, 1st Viscount Maugham, and Helen Romer. He was born into a legal dynasty and was expected to follow his father and grandfather and devote himself to the law. Although he qualified as a barrister he realised that his real calling was to follow his uncle William Somerset Maugham as a writer.
Described as "defiantly homosexual", but in fact bisexual, Lord Maugham never married, and the viscountcy became extinct upon his death. He died from a pulmonary embolism, compounded by long-standing diabetes mellitus, though an official cause of death was difficult to obtain as his body was apparently lost for forty-eight hours after his death. He had three sisters: Kate, Honor, and the novelist Diana Marr-Johnson (1908–2007). He is buried in Hartfield, Sussex, next to his parents.
Maugham bought the merchant ship MV Joyita as a hulk in the early 1960s, writing about the mystery of the incident in his book The Joyita Mystery (1962). The ship had been lost at sea only to reappear five weeks later after a massive search found nothing, without crew or passengers, and with four tons of cargo missing.
He wrote an autobiography, Escape from the Shadows (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1972), and then a sequel Search for Nirvana (1975) and books about his uncle, as well as many other novels and plays.
His first three novels were filmed: The Servant by Joseph Losey in 1963, Line on Ginger by Guy Hamilton in 1953, and The Rough and the Smooth by Robert Siodmak in 1959.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Maugham,_2nd_Viscount_Maugham
Further Readings:
Paperback: 160 pages
Publisher: Bookpeople; 1st edition (July 1982)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0917342909
ISBN-13: 978-0917342905
Amazon: The Boy from Beirut and Other Stories
A nicely produced limited edition of these intriguing stories by Maugham.
More LGBT History at my website: www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Gay Classics
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