PETER BURTON INTERVIEWS ROBIN MAUGHAM, 1976

Robert “Robin” Cecil Romer Maugham (1916-81), 2^nd Viscount Maugham, was an author, and the nephew of the more famous author, Somerset Maugham. He was open about being primarily attracted to teenage boys and this was the subject of much of his writing.

Peter William Burton (1945-2011) was an English journalist.  His long interview of Maugham was first published in the Summer/Fall issue number 33/34 of Gay Sunshine, the journal of the Gay Sunshine Press in San Francisco. It was republished with revised notes in Robin Maugham’s posthumously published The Boy from Beirut and Other Stories, edited by Burton, San Francisco: Gay Sunshine, 1982, from which the following extracts are taken, being everything of Greek love interest.

Burton’s differentiation through square brackets of his notes from the interview itself has been accentuated in what follows by also putting his notes in green.

Introduction: Peter Burton knew Robin Maugham for almost fourteen years and worked with him as an editorial assistant on several books (including Escape from the Shadows, Search for Nirvana, and The Black Tent and Other Stories, to which he provided the Introduction).The following interview took place in late 1976 over a series of weekends in Brighton, a seaside resort just outside London, where Robin Maugham lived. The introduction and all the connecting material and commentary printed within square brackets [] were written by Peter Burton especially for this interview. Peter Burton writes:

“The interview with Robin Maugham and the connecting Notes on his life and work were written in 1976. The Notes have been revised so as to take into account Robin’s death (March 13, 1981) — but otherwise no substantial changes have been made.”

Robin Maugham on his military service in the 2^nd World War: However, it didn’t work out that way — I was a trooper for a year and I had the most enchanting time and for the first time, and for the first occasion in my life I discovered to my amazement that the love of one boy for another or a man for another wasn’t at all limited to the upper middle class to which I belonged. In fact, subsequent experiences and enquiries that I’ve made have convinced me that homosexuality — the act of love or love making between a man and a boy or boys together or two men together — this homosexuality is most rife in what we would call the lower income group — that is to say, manual workers, miners for instance. Next comes, and I’m doing it per head of course, next comes the upper class or aristocracy whatever you like to call it, and way back comes — way down the scale — comes the middle class, particularly the lower middle and middle middle classes in which there is an intolerable prejudice against homosexuality which has never ceased to shock me. Many lives have been ruined by the kind of Surbiton/Purley attitude of parents to all sex which has thwarted the natural bent of their children and made them into neurotic wrecks.

[…]

 

Robin Maugham, asked when he became aware of the homosexuality of his famous uncle “Willie” Somerset Maugham: I suppose I must have known — oh, I know exactly when — I went to Vienna to study the piano, in between leaving Eton and going up to Cambridge, and there I suddenly found that Willie was famous. Then of course his secretary and beloved friend Gerald Haxton came out and tried to seduce me. So long before I went to Cambridge I knew all about it. I mean… about them.^[1]

Peter Burton: Did it worry you? At that age?

Robin Maugham: Well you see, this may make me seem very young for my years, but when I was sixteen or seventeen or eighteen it never occurred to me that anyone older than the age of eighteen went in for it. I mean, the natural thing at Eton was for an older boy to be in love with a younger boy. Such was their nature. But I was so ignorant and it never occurred to me that this went on into adult life, let alone old age. Well, if they were homosexual, they did nothing about it. The idea of a man of say sixty sleeping with a boy of seventeen was not only bizarre to me but rather unpleasant. I learned a tolerance of it when I was in Vienna and of course my attitude towards the whole subject has crystallized over the years — you must remember that I am now sixty-one.

As we all know, the laws regarding homosexuality in England have been changed — thank Heavens. So we made it legal for what is known as consenting adults to live together providing they’re over twenty-one. Well of course the age of twenty-one is perfectly ridiculous. When it’s perfectly legal to sleep with a girl of sixteen but illegal to sleep with a boy of that age, it’s nonsense. Also I may at this stage point out that people who have studied the subject like, for instance, Sir John Wolfenden and lots of psychotherapists and doctors and people who have had to deal with the young, will all tell you that the age at which someone of the male sex is capable of the greatest sexual output is in between the ages of twelve and twenty-one. And our system, in point of fact, prevents legal sexual outlets during the very years a boy most needs it. However, to come back to my point, thirty years ago men who set up a household together were immediately suspected of being strange and “that way.” With the attitude — with the climate of change — now we have more general tolerance and less prejudice, a kind of form of marriage between two men is now possible in England. And even socially acceptable. In fact you don’t have to travel as far as somewhere like the Oasis of Siwa where marriage between a man and a boy was even legal until 1926. You don’t have to travel as far as that oasis to find a “married couple.”

[…]

I’ve found my love affairs have lasted for five or six years, because I’ve always fallen in love with someone far younger than myself. And now, my relationship is far more — I take far more the position of an incestuous father figure. I suppose I’ve had four or five major affairs in between the ages of sixteen and sixty. Obviously they’ve gone well or badly according to how I have behaved and as the beloved one has behaved; in accordance with that. But I’ve never regretted any of my affairs because I’ve been able to take and give so much that is really valuable and one can’t reckon it at all.

[…]

Peter Burton: There’s probably no other novelist writing in English who’s written for so long a period and so consistently about sexuality and the sexual motivation of character — heterosexual and homosexual. For example your first novel The Servant — now I’m sure everyone always asks this, but how did you come to write it?

Robin Maugham: Yes, I’m often asked that. And the answer is, that two disparate incidents that occurred to me in real life somehow fused in my mind.

Maugham first told the story of a year-long affair with a girl of sixteen that he had when he was twenty-five. Then…

Well, when the war ended my mother bought me a little house in Chelsea. I’d been abroad and when I came back she’d installed this manservant, who in the novel I’ve called Barrett. Now Barrett was the perfect manservant and he looked after the house beautifully, cooked terribly well and kept everything very clean. But somehow he gave me the shudders. Something about him frightened me. But it seemed too ridiculous to dismiss the perfect manservant merely because he worried one by his presence. Well, one evening I’d been out with Mary Churchill^[2] to dinner and then afterwards to the cinema. I asked her back for a drink. And we came up to my living room and she said she’d love a lager. I said, “I know there’s two bottles in the ‘fridge.’” I walked down the stairs which led to the dining room, down the other flight of stairs which led to the kitchen and the servant’s bedroom. There was no sign of Barrett but the door to his bedroom was open and lying naked, face downwards, spread-eagled on the bed was one of the most beautiful boys of about fourteen I’ve ever seen. His hair was fair and curly, his skin was immaculate and his figure was lovely — his body was lovely. And while I was staring in wonderment at this beautiful creature on the double bed — a voice behind me said, “Good evening sah. I see that you are admiring my nephew. Perhaps you would like him to come up later to say goodnight to you?” And at that moment I saw the portals of blackmail and the gates of prison yawning open before my gaze. Yawning open as they met my gaze. And I pretended I hadn’t heard what he’d said — I quickly turned round — I collected the two bottles from the fridge and went upstairs — “Goodnight Barrett,” I said and walked on up the stairs — ran up the stairs. When I got into the living room, Mary Churchill stared at me and said, “Whatever happened to you? You look white as a ghost.” And I said, “Yes; I’ve just seen one.” But I never told her the story.

 

A few weeks later when I was down in the country, I was telephoned by the police who told me that Barrett had been caught trying to pawn all my clothes. I was asked if I wanted to bring an action and I said no, I just wanted him out of the house and never to see him again. And I never have. Then a year later these two completely disparate incidents fused in my mind and I began writing — but I can’t remember the actual act of writing it.^[3]

[…]

[The Wrong People (1970) originally appeared in paperback in America — under the pseudonym David Griffin — in 1967. It obviously didn’t seem like a good time to write so openly a homosexual novel and publish under one’s own name. But by 1970, a German edition and a lot of revision later, Robin Maugham decided to “publish and be damned.”

Not only that. He did a lengthy series of interviews with the press and a sensational Late Night Line-Up on television. Somewhat to the surprise of Sheridan Morley and Alan Brien, Robin suddenly announced to the assembled BBC-watching millions that he’d loved girls and boys all his life!

Robin Maugham wrote the first draft of The Wrong People in 1958 — nine years before the Sexual Offences Act (1967) became law. Maugham had already used homosexual characters in several of his novels, notably in Behind the Mirror (1955), but The Wrong People was his first wholly homosexual novel. He showed the first draft to various friends — including Michael Davidson and Sir Harold Nicolson. Their view was that it would be a mistake to publish the book. In 1961, Robin Maugham showed the manuscript to his uncle, W. Somerset Maugham. His uncle read the book through at a sitting and then told Robin that he thought it was the best thing he had yet written. “But I think it would ruin your reputation,” Maugham told his nephew. And went on to say that though he thought the book was “extremely well done,” publication in England would cause an “outcry in the press.” However, Robin Maugham decided that he would try to publish The Wrong People in America. Copies of the manuscript were given to his British agent (who made discreet approaches to several major English publishers) and copies were also sent to Robin’s American agent. Reactions against the book — in both countries — were strong. For whilst both English and American publishers liked the novel, they felt it would be a mistake to publish it.

These reactions seem curious — especially when one considers that already a large body of homosexual fiction had appeared: Rodney Garland’s The Heart in Exile; Paul Buckland’s A Chorus of Witches; Kenneth Martins highly praised Aubade; the anonymous A Room in Chelsea Square.

Yet there is one consideration which may have made the publishers and, ultimately, the author think. For none of the authors previously mentioned had a really newsworthy name. In 1958 Robin’s father died. Robin became the second Viscount Maugham of Hartfield. His uncle, Somerset Maugham, was still very much alive. Thus a frankly homosexual novel bearing the name Maugham — by the son of the recently dead former Lord Chancellor and the nephew of a very much alive Grand Old Man of English letters — might draw far more attention, and the reasoning would seem to have been that this attention would have been hostile — than a homosexual novel by an author with a less distinguished name.

Robin Maugham withdrew The Wrong People from circulation. But he certainly didn’t forget about it, for over the next few years; he carefully rewrote and revised it.

Now, of course, viewed in the light of far more explicit recent publications, The Wrong People seems positively tame. The writing is simple, direct and allusive rather than pointed. There are no detailed scenes of sex and though sexuality is not absent much of it is left to the imagination of the individual reader. It should be noted that the love objects throughout the novel are young boys (aged about fourteen) and the pederasty may well have told against the book with many publishers. Certainly at the time of writing (1958) readily available novels about pederasty were just not around.

Maugham’s novel did follow the established conventions for gay novels, however, in that the ending was “unhappy.” It is interesting to note, in passing, that when the late Sal Mineo was trying to mount a film version of The Wrong People, he wanted it to have a happy ending.

Sitting at the centre of the plot, like some all-devouring spider at the center of its web, is Ewing Baird. Ewing is a rich, middle-aged Anglo-American expatriate gay.^[4] He lives in Tangier in a state of immense comfort and luxury. But he is not happy. Ewing is searching for the perfect lover and companion and in the most crucial piece of dialogue in the novel explains that “… if I’m interested in a boy, I do want to be able to discuss art and literature with him. I want to impart to him the little fraction of it all that I know… For me that’s the main point of the whole business.”

But Ewing’s quest seems hopeless. For the boys he knows have already been formed. They have been too old to settle cosily into a Pygmalion and Galatea relationship.

Ewing meets Arnold Turner, a master at an English approved school. Turner is holidaying in Tangier and, until he meets Ewing, having a pretty dull time. Ewing introduces him to the soft under-belly of Tangier, helps him slide into a passionate love affair with a young Morrocan boy, Riffi, and then announces his plans.

Ewing’s plan is devilishly simple. In exchange for a villa outside Tangier, enough money to live on and, most of all, for Riffi, Arnold will smuggle one of his pupils out of England — and bring him to Ewing for transformation into the ideal companion. The plan works beautifully. But then Arnold’s conventional morality intervenes and destroys it. By the end of the book only Ewing remains untouched, unharmed and in a position to carry on as before.

Remarkably, for a “queer” novel, The Wrong People received a great deal of critical acclaim, both in England and in America, and shot to the top of the British bestseller list. It is an odd and compelling book — though hardly, as Cyril Connolly’s introduction describes it, a thriller. Ewing and the camp bar-owner Wayne are basically rather unpleasant characters, as is the segment of Tangier society described in the book. Arnold Turner is simply wet — no tears need be shed over him. He is one of those dreary people who are quite unable to grab at any of the opportunities life offers them. Riffi, the Moroccan boy, is the only appealing character in the book. But Ewing is not to be despised. He may be wicked by conventional terms, but he is also a deeply sad character trapped in a very real situation.

For it is not uncommon for the rich (or not-so-rich) quean to find himself attracted by boys who are neither of his class nor possessed of his intellect. Relationships such as these too often founder as they begin — in the bed. For, too often, once out of bed there is a void. Communion may be made — but only through a meeting of the body, rarely a meeting of the mind.

Ewing’s quest is also Robin’s quest. Throughout his books we get descriptions of young men and boys who are remarkably similar. Even if it is not actually written, it is possible to read between the lines and see that these fictional relationships failed because of the mismating of minds. In Robin’s autobiography, he writes of his relationship with “Jim” in exactly the tones of Ewing Baird in The Wrong People. I asked him if he saw a lot of himself in Ewing.] 

Robin Maugham: I think certain things, yes. That long speech where Ewing explains that a Moroccan boy of fourteen is no good to him because he wants a boy of fourteen of his own race and his own nation whom he can take round every gallery, show the most beautiful things in Europe — educate.

[This led to a question about the reality of any of the characters in The Wrong People — were they based on Tangier characters?]

Robin Maugham: It’s interesting; almost every old quean in Tangier is determined that he is a character in The Wrong People. Now, Cyril Connolly, who wrote the introduction and knew Tangier as well as I do, went through the book with a fine tooth comb with me to check that there was no one who could claim a likeness. You see, the schoolmaster doesn’t belong to Tangier, he is totally imaginary. Only one character is totally real and that is Riffi. Oh, and Wayne. He’s based on Dean of Dean’s bar. But Dean is dead now.

[The Wrong People was first published pseudonymously in America in 1967 — in a soft-covered edition and under the name David Griffin (Paperback Library Inc., New York). Maugham published the the book under his own name in Germany in 1969 (Anders Als Die Andern; Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich). Heinemann published the English edition in the summer of 1970 — and found they had a surprise bestseller on their hands. The reviews were excellent (ranging from Richard Barkley in the Sunday Express: “I rate it story-telling at its best,” to Michael Maxwell Scott in the Daily Telegraph: “A very well told story this, every move nicely calculated, and undeniably shuddery.”) The Wrong People became a number one bestseller; it was quickly reprinted and the film rights were sold.

Yet even this successful English edition had been cloaked in respectability, by the simple addition of an Introduction by Cyril Connolly (dropped from the subsequent American edition; 1971) which described the book as a thriller.

Robin Maugham, ultimately, was very lucky with the timing of publication of The Wrong People. Had the original version of the novel appeared in 1958, it is possible that it would have harmed his reputation (a point very much open to conjecture). Had the book appeared more recently — when homosexual writings by well-known authors are less of an oddity — it is possible the book would have received the same critical treatment of so many gay publications — either cursory or derisory. As it was, the timing was just right.

The Wrong People proved to be one of the most popular of Robin Maugham’s books; for, basically, it is about a fantasy world. The Tangier about which he wrote no longer exists; political events have overtaken the Ewings and, just as much, the Riffis. The Ewings may cling on to their villas above Tangier — but life is less easy. The young boys like Riffi arc still available, but they no longer possess the guileless innocence; today they are aware that “the wrong people” visiting Tangier are intruders, many of them have become fiercely nationalistic and resent the attitudes of tourists and visitors. Thus, anyone today picking up a copy of Robin Maugham’s The Wrong People will find themselves reading an exciting story which, as much as anything, must now be viewed as a piece of historical fiction.)]

[…]

Peter Burton: It was when you were writing Nomad you first encountered Michael Davidson?

Robin Maugham: Indeed, yes. I was responsible, in fact, for Michael Davidson writing his book called The World, the Flesh and Myself, because there came a moment when Michael as usual was broke and so was I, so that I couldn’t lend him any more money and I racked my brains to see how I could get him some money because he wanted to get off to Italy again. I said, “If you write the story of your life beginning with a paragraph to the effect that this is the story of one who has devoted his life to the love of boys, I bet you I can get you a publisher.” And he said, “All right,” and I produced the publisher and I produced an agent to lunch in my little house in London and he got his advance. He went to Italy, and knowing that once he was in Italy he would forget all about work and would indulge himself in his pursuit of small boys which was unending, I said to the publisher, “Only give him so much advance each month and say you’ll only pay the next instalment if you get the first instalment in.” That was the way we got the book finished. And a very fine book it was.

Michael was the most fantastic character altogether. He was terrifying in Tangier. He always said that this story is not accurate, but it is in fact. What occurred was, immediately after the war I was to be the special Observer correspondent in North Africa. Now I knew quite a lot about the Middle East but not about North Africa. And I wanted to be the first journalist to cross from Casablanca to Suez — which indeed I did. but I was so ignorant that when David Astor of the Observer said to me, “There is one thing you must keep off — Davidson’s territory,” I thought it might be a part of North Africa! So I went home and I consulted larger and larger maps and no sign of Davidson’s territory. Then I heard in some bar in Fleet Street that in fact Michael Davidson was the Observer’s “stringer” for Morocco and guarded it jealously. I was very worried by this because Morocco was the place I most wanted to go to in North Africa, quite naturally, because more was going on there. So I was relieved when David Astor called for me and said, “Look, we haven’t heard anything from Michael Davidson for a long time and we’re rather worried. I think you should go to Michael Davidson’s territory to look him out. He’s probably somewhere in Tangier.” So I went to Tangier and I met an old journalist who told me that the reason why no one had heard from Michael for some time was that he was confined and locked up in a male bordello. Well, I found the male bordello in one of those tiny side streets running off the Socco Chico and there was Michael. The reason he couldn’t leave was that they’d taken away his typewriter, he couldn’t communicate with the outside world at all! But he wasn’t upset by his condition and was absolutely so funny and so charming about it that I went out and I got all the pawn tickets, and redeemed his trousers and his old tweed jacket and indeed his typewriter.^[5] I paid his bill at the place because I’d got some money from David Astor. We went out and had a wonderful dinner at the expense of the Observer and decided that we’d do a trip round Morocco together.

Indeed, meeting Michael Davidson, quite apart from the fact that we became great friends, was a wonderful piece of luck for me because he really did know a great deal about all the sides of Morocco and helped very much with my book which appeared eventually and was called North African Notebook. But walking around Tangier with him was rather embarrassing to me at first because we were followed — he was followed wherever he went — rather like the Pied Piper of Hamelin by hordes of little children who were making the most obscene gestures by putting their fingers in their mouths. So bad did this get at one moment that he begged me to give him money to buy himself a little boat which was moored in Tangier harbour and had one cabin. And off he went with his latest favourite and they lived on the boat. The favourite would go on shore to buy the food that he ate. I’ve never known a man of any nationality, of any race, be able to exist on as little as Michael Davidson did. It was remarkable and admirable. And at night you would be walking around the harbour and you’d see the oil lamp burning from the cabin — from the curtained cabin of this little boat. And you’d see it rocking away — whereas there was no tide or current or waves — rocking of the boat went on most of the night. And Michael Davidson was exactly where he wanted to be. But eventually he couldn’t bear it any longer. A present was given to the well beloved and Michael went back to England. Then he became the Observer correspondent in Palestine, then in Cyprus, and then in the Far East; or is it the other way round — I think it is?

Peter Burton: I think so. He was the most curious man and it’s such a pity he didn’t write more.^[6]

Robin Maugham: Well, the trouble was that he was incurably lazy and had this incurable passion for the pursuit of boys. I’ve never known anyone devote quite so much energy to it. But he did — he really was rather — he did things that I’d have liked myself to have done, but which I’ve been either too afraid or too nervous or too bound up in my work to do. For instance, one day in the market place in Tangier he met a boy of about twelve who had come in from the Rif mountains to do the monthly shopping with his family. And Michael took him back to the wonderful room he had in a villa up on the Marshan which was called the Villa Sackars — you can imagine he was called either Suckarse or Suck-off… and he took the boy back there and they spent the night in each other’s arms, and the second night, and on the third morning the boy said to him, “I’ve got to go back.” Incidentally, Michael did speak Moroccan Arabic. So he said to the boy, “I’ll come back with you.” He went back with the boy. Now it’s very interesting when we’re talking — we were talking about social acceptance and what went on in Purley. What went on in the tents in the Rif was that Michael was immediately accepted by the tribe and he lived there in a tent with the boy with no Europeans — no one who spoke his own language — for three months.

Now it doesn’t seem very long, but believe me, I’ve done it for three months in the Arab Legion, I’ve been on long camel journeys of two weeks — or two or three weeks — but I’ve never been, I couldn’t, I don’t think I have been in a tribe for three or four months. And I don’t think I could have left my life — walked out of my life as one might walk out of a picture, and disappear, not letting anyone know where I was — and have lived with a people whose language I could only just speak and just devote the entirety of my day to the entertainment of a boy of twelve with love making. But

Michael did and loved every minute of it and only returned because his money ran out and of course the tribe was so impoverished that they couldn’t keep him. But there’s a postscript to that story because when we were in Rabat, some years later, walking along the street, a boy of about fifteen or sixteen rushed up to him calling, “Mike, Mike,” and flung his arms around Mike’s neck. And this was the boy whom we called Riffi — now of sixteen or seventeen and very beautiful (which of course was too old for Mike). But I tried to console Riffi as best I could!

Peter Burton: And Riffi is perhaps one of your best known characters.

Robin Maugham: From The Wrong People, yes. I had the most terrible trouble over The Wrong People because I wrote it when I was in Ischia in a villa that I’d leased from the Waltons, the composer and his wife, who I came to adore and still do. In the villa next to mine was Terry Rattigan. And I decided that I would write this book whatever happened. So I wrote it and it was typed out and I then showed it to my uncle. And Willie said, “I must tell you that I began reading your book last night in bed and I simply couldn’t put it down. It’s easily the best work you’ve ever done and I think it’s perfectly excellent.” And then he paused and looked at me and said, “Having told you that, I must tell you that if you publish it, it will kill you as a writer stone dead.” I shall never forget my horror at those words. He said, “The public will be disgusted by it and you’ll be panned by all the critics and you’ll lose such little public as you’ve got.” And then he added, “Don’t be cross with me, it doesn’t prevent the fact that it’s an excellent book and I daresay one day — not in our lifetime, not in your lifetime — it will be published. But the interesting thing is, I don’t know whether you realise it, but in fact what you’ve proved in the novel is that homosexuality simply doesn’t work.”

I’m not sure that the book does prove that actually. It certainly wasn’t my intention. In writing it, my intention in writing in fact was a very altruistic one — I wanted to expose the vile and horrible conditions that obtained in our approved schools, where young kids of twelve onwards are sent if they’re in need of care and protection. And where, in one particular school, the house master was a vicious sadist. Now the rate of pay for masters who teach in approved schools on the Burnham scale is higher than the normal scale because of the risks involved with these tough kids. But a house master, as one headmaster of an approved school told me, need only have a vaccination certificate. That’s all he needs — he need have no education, nothing. Well, obviously the job attracts every really vicious pervert there is. And in this particular school, this house master would make a kid come in, who had done something wrong and say, “Now look, it’s either a whipping or you can let down your trousers.” And then he would rape them — and hurt them most terribly. Now, I was told this by one boy from this school, and from a completely different town in England from another boy who had been at the school, I heard exactly the same story. And I checked it up and found that it was true. And all parts in The Wrong People of life in approved school are factual. The whole thing about the masters who flicked their bare bottoms after showers, and he was the one who would rape them — and he’d choose his victims and he had one dormitory of — which contained just boys that he’d raped. And he would go in there of an evening and he’d choose the one he wanted for the night.

But that had been my motive in writing the book; and in fact it did have an effect. People did get hot under the collar — the politicians. And an enquiry was made. But as far as the homosexual side of it was concerned, I was determined to publish the book somehow, so I published it in paperback anonymously in the United States under the pseudonym of David Griffin — for some unknown reason. And my uncle was right in as much as it didn’t have much of a success in paper under the name David Griffin. But meanwhile I showed the typescript to various friends including Noel Coward, who took a violent dislike to it and said, “What irritates me about all these ‘queer’ books is that they go on as if all ‘queers’ were miserable, whereas as you know perfectly well, you have only to look at me to see my dear boy that there are ‘queers’ who are very happy indeed — morning, noon and night!” Well, various people took various views about it, but Terry Rattigan, reading it again, said, “Publish and be damned,” quoting the Duke.

I’d love to see it as a film. It really is very filmic. Of course, Sal Mineo^[7] made a mistake by showing the film script to the Moroccan government in order to get permission to make it in Morocco — Tangier in particular. But of course that was a huge mistake because he should never have shown them the actual text because they were utterly scandalised by my description of the Moroccans’ habits and way of life.

Peter Burton: The Tangier about which you wrote no longer exists. Political events have overtaken the Ewings just as much as the Riffis. The young boys are still available, but today many of them are nationalistic and resent the attitudes of tourists and visitors.

Robin Maugham: Yes, I quite agree with that. It’s not only a change on sexual attitudes — sex with every boy was available. But it’s a change in political attitudes more than anything. You see they can — they’ve listened to radio — they can hear Radio Cairo perfectly easily and they’ve now been told by all the Arab broadcasting stations, with the exception of Tunisia, that we’re wicked, vicious capitalists. And the first time — I was with a friend of mine in Tangier, mainly for a holiday and to see old chums like Alec Waugh and his wife who I adore — both of them — and we were being pestered by a boy and my friend, after about a quarter of an hour of this, while we were going for a quiet walk — my friend said, quite naturally, “Oh do go home,” and the boy said in English, “You go home, you go home and don’t come back to my country.” Now you see, this is absolute propaganda from the radio.

Peter Burton: Well, I always remember when we were in Morocco and we were driving with Brian Desmond Hurst down the mountains through the clouds from Ketama back to Cheuan when the announcement in Arabic came over the radio of Nasser’s death. And if one can indulge in a little purple prose, we were chilled by the breeze from the wind of change. And I remember you commenting that this would affect the whole of North Africa and the Arab crescent.

Robin Maugham: Yes, oh indeed. No, the last time I was in Tangier, I was very much aware of how completely dated The Wrong People was, so far as the bars are concerned, you see, and the bordellos. It’s a very interesting psychological-sociological thing I suppose, that every single country in Africa as it gained its independence turned, at least superficially, uptight — decent and morally pure. Thus, on the very night of independence in Morocco, the greatest bordello quarter in Africa in Meknes was closed down. And the female and male bordellos in Tangier were closed down. And of course the men are against the tourists having their boys because they feel, Moroccan boys for Moroccan men not for wicked European and American tourists. […]

Explaining the current hostility of Arabs to homosexuality, especially with Europeans:

Now there’s a second factor in it and that is although all of them — I mean every generation of Arabs — went with Europeans, there was always a financial — and why not? — there was always a resentment that a boy could be had for a dollar — or less — and badly treated and flung off like you would a discarded sock. No, there always was a religious resentment. In some tribes, such as the Senussi of North Africa who lived mainly in Libya, they’re so strict that they will not allow fornication or liquor or smoking, and certainly not sex, although that goes on in secret. I’m almost sure that today in Morocco it goes on just as much as I suggested it did in The Wrong People. Not on the surface. But you will see that as these countries gain assurance and fling off their inferiority complex which had caused their resentment at having sex with Europeans, it will all come back again. Mark my words! But I’m told that life is very difficult in Tangier now. […]

The most wonderful thing was the homosexual debate in the House of Lords.^[8] There was a great moment when some tremendous anti-queer got up to speak, and everybody made a rush for the tea bar. But not before two very old Peers who knew their stuff far better than we did. They had looked at their list and seen that this old bore was going to speak and they’d got the lovely prize position in the embrasure, very good seats overlooking the river. And they really ordered themselves all the teas their nannies had never allowed them. They had muffins and crumpets and honey and they were absolutely gorging themselves. Now both of them were over eighty and deaf. One said to the other: “I say, Blenkinsop, I never knew you were a bugger.” Rather like a kind of prehistoric animal, it took a long time for the remark to sink in. And Blenkinsop said, “Well, I’m not, as a matter of fact, you know, I’m happily married and I’ve produced eight nippers.” So the other one said, “Well, you voted for them, didn’t you?” “Well, to tell you the truth, I did vote for the buggers,” said Blenkinsop, “and I’ll tell you why. When I was a nipper myself I once had it whopped up me at school and, to tell you the truth, I rather enjoyed it.” Two absolutely wonderful old gentlemen.

^[1] This happened in 1933, when Maugham was seventeen. It appears from the story Somerset Maugham's Lesson on Sexual Naivety in his memoir Escape from the Shadows that while Somerset Maugham and Gerald Haxton were regarded as still lovers, their relationship had involved into a companionship and the sexual interest of both men was in teenage boys, with Haxton acting as procurer.

^[2] Mary Churchill was the youngest child of the recent and future Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill.

^[3] Maugham had already told the story of Barrett in nearly identical terms, but omitting this last paragraph about him, in his memoir Escape from the Shadows, where it is dated to 1946. In his novella The Servant (1948) the 14-year-old girl is turned into a 16-year-old girl, unsurprising since even then the idea that it might pass censorship as a film was considered out of the question. When in 1963 it finally was made into a highly-acclaimed film starring Dirk Bogarde as Barrett, the girl was further transformed into a woman; extremely few admirers of the film seem to be aware that the inspiration for this part of the film was a true pederastic scene.

^[4] The word “gay” is never used for Ewing (or anyone else) in The Wrong People and, however fashionable it was in the 1970s to think of Greek love as “gay”, is thoroughly misleading.

^[5] In his memoir, The World, the Flesh and Myself (1962), Davidson quotes Maugham’s North African Notebook (1949) as an authority for their having first met in Dean’s Bar (ie. not a boy brothel, however much it was a rendez-vous for liaisons with boys). Given that the contradiction here is between Maugham’s early reticent writing and his later much franker writing, the brothel version seems much more likely.

^[6] Davidson did write more. He wrote Some Boys, a superbly fine example of travel writing published in 1969 and made up of sixteen chapters, each on a city where he had liaisons with boys. Then he wrote Sicilian Vespers, an account of his life in the 1960s on a tiny Sicilian island, not quite finished at his death, but finally published in 2021 as part of his Sicilian Vespers and Other Writings.

^[7] Sal Mineo (1939-76) was an American actor most famous for his role in the film Rebel Without a Cause (1955). Significantly, he was also boysexual, as discussed in Michael Gregg Michaud’s Sal Mineo: A Biography, (New York: Crown Archetype, 2010).

^[8] Here Maugham is referring to the debate in the British House of Lords prior to the legalisation of sex between men over 21 in 1967.