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Ashenden: Or the British Agent


Ashenden: Or the British Agent is a 1928 collection of loosely linked stories by W. Somerset Maugham. It is partly based on the author's experience as a member of British Intelligence in Europe during the First World War.

During WWI a playwright named Ashenden is enlisted as an agent through threats and promises by Colonel R., a British Intelligence officer. He is sent to Switzerland where he becomes involved in a number of counter-intelligence operations; which he accomplishes by means of persuasion, bribery, or blackmail. He himself does not carry or use a weapon.

In one he accompanies a man called the Hairless Mexican to Italy, where a Greek agent of the Germans is to be bribed into turning into a double agent. However since the Greek will not cooperate he is murdered by the Hairless Mexican, who also keeps the bribe money intended for the Greek as his fee.

In another he must induce an Italian dancer to betray her Indian lover, a German agent, by convincing him to cross the border from neutral Switzerland to see her in allied France, so that the Allies can arrest him; the ironic denouement is that after the man is captured by the British, then arrested, tried, and executed all on the same day, the dancer goes to Ashenden and begs to have back the valuable ring and watch she had given to the man whom she has just betrayed.

After a number of similar operations, Ashenden is sent to Imperial Russia during the 1917 revolution, as an "agent of influence", to do what he can to keep Russia in the war against Germany. This is the setting for the last six chapters of the book. One of these chapters was the subject of a deliberate homage by Ian Fleming, namely the short story "Quantum of Solace", which is very similar in structure and in tone to chapter 12 of "Ashenden" .

The chapters are collected in later collections under different titles, as below. It is unknown whether they were rewritten slightly from original publication.

It is said that Somerset Maugham modelled the character of Ashenden after himself. He is supposed to have modelled Chandra Lal after Virendranath Chattopadhyaya, an Indian Nationalist in Germany during the war. Maugham, who was in the British Secret Service in Europe during the war, based a number of his stories on his own experiences. Among other enterprises, Britain's European intelligence network attempted to eliminate a number of Indian nationalists in Europe, notably members of the Berlin Committee. Donald Gullick, a British agent, was dispatched to assassinate Chattopadhaya while the latter was on his way to Geneva to meet another Indian nationalist, Mahendra Pratap and forward the Kaiser's invitation to Berlin. The short story of Giulia Lazzari is a blend of Gullick's attempts to assassinate Chattopadhyaya and Mata Hari's story. Winston Churchill reportedly advised Maugham to burn 14 other stories.


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