Ashenden: Or the British Agent is a 1927 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.
Ashenden: Or the British Agent is a 1927 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 the First World War, a writer named Ashenden, referenced only by his surname, is enlisted as an agent through threats and promises by "R.", a Colonel with British Intelligence. He is sent to Switzerland where he becomes involved in a number of counter-intelligence operations; these he accomplishes by means of persuasion, bribery, blackmail, or coincidence. He does not use a weapon.
In one, he accompanies a man called the Hairless Mexican to Italy, where they are to intercept important papers carried by an arriving Greek agent of the Germans. The Hairless Mexican meets the only Greek on the incoming ship, and during a search of the Greek's hotel room, the Hairless Mexican and Ashenden do not find any papers. As they prepare to leave the country, Ashenden decodes a cable which tells him that the intended Greek had never boarded the ship; spots of dried blood on the Hairless Mexican's sleeve mean that he had killed the wrong man.
In another, Ashenden must induce an Italian dancer to betray her lover, an anti-British Indian and a German agent, by convincing him to cross the border from neutral Switzerland to see her in allied France, where the Allies can arrest him. The ironic denouement is that after the man is captured by the British, he commits suicide before he can be arrested, tried, and executed. When she finds out of his death, the dancer goes to Ashenden and asks to get back the valuable 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. He spends eleven days on the train from Vladivostok to Petrograd sharing a cabin with Harrington, an American business man who is a constant conversationalist. A few days after they arrive, the revolution breaks out in earnest. As they try to evacuate, the business man insists on getting back his laundry that had been sent out. During his return with the laundry, Harrington is killed in a street riot.
The stories combine Maugham's talent at character detail with a tragic structure where an affecting and sometimes funny person is damaged in the game of national spying. Some regard these as the forerunner of all the more sceptical spy fiction written by such as Eric Ambler, Graham Greene and books such as The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Raymond Chandler was a great admirer of Ashenden, writing to the author in January 1950: "There are no other great spy stories - none at all. I have been searching and I know".[1]
In later collections, the chapters are combined and collected under different titles, as below.
The incidents described in the stories are modelled on Maugham's experiences as a secret agent, and "the central character, Ashenden, is very much an autobiographical character."[2] He is supposed to have modelled Chandra Lal after Virendranath Chattopadhyaya, an Indian Nationalist in Germany during the war.[3] 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.[4][5][page needed]
There have been many full cast adaptations of the stories for BBC Radio.[6]
There are also various BBC serialised solo readings:
There is also at least one full length audiobook:
A character named "William Ashenden" is the narrator of Maugham's 1930 novel Cakes and Ale.[30] A character named Ashenden also appears in several other of Maugham's short stories.
The character appears briefly in the book The Bloody Red Baron by Kim Newman.
"Ashenden" is mentioned a number of times in the Mick Herron novel "Slow Horses".