Photo: 1929 Bassano/Camera Press / TT
Sample of authors
Maugham, W. Somerset
William Somerset Maugham was a British author born in Paris. His father was a lawyer at the British Embassy there. When Maugham was eight years old, his mother died of tuberculosis, two years later his father died of cancer and the boy was sent to live with his uncle, the Vicar of Whitstable in Kent. Maugham suffered from a serious stammer, he was shy and avoided speaking in public; unlike his...
Literary figures
Desmond Merrion
Gender: Male
During the First World War, he worked in the British military intelligence service. Then Desmond Merrion became a private detective and solves a large number of cases that his creator Miles Burton (pseudonym for Cecil Street) has written about. He usually works together with Scotland Yard detective Henry Arnold. Merrion is of short stature, is well-built, looks often as though he is bored and is...