Families with the name originate from the area surrounding Malham and Kirkby Malham.
W. Somerset Maugham | Somerset Maugham Award | Robin Maugham | Syrie Maugham |
Maugham drew his title from the remark of Sir Toby Belch to Malvolio in William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night: "Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?" Cakes and ale are the emblems of the good life in the tagline to the fable attributed to Aesop, "The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse": "Better beans and bacon in peace than cakes and ale in fear".
Maugham regularly portrayed Kelly in his works, as Lionel Hillier in Cakes and Ale, as Frederick Lawson in Of Human Bondage and as O'Malley in His Excellency presenting him as "the young Irish painter called O'Malley", and dedicating Ashenden to him.
Gary Braver, bestselling author of Skin Deep, said “Paul’s writing in The Sultan and the Mermaid Queen has the humanity of Somerset Maugham, the adventure of Joseph Conrad, the perception of Paul Theroux, and a self-effacing voice uniquely his own.”
His feature films include Angels and Insects, set in Victorian England, which was nominated for an Academy Award and the Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or, Up at the Villa, an adaptation of the W. Somerset Maugham novella, starring Sean Penn, Anne Bancroft and Kristin Scott Thomas, The Situation, a political thriller set in Iraq, released in 2006, and the highly regarded The Music of Chance (1993).
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).
Gladys Cooper (who was also in the 1971 revival) appeared as Mrs. St Maugham, with Siobhán McKenna as Miss Madrigal, Betsy von Furstenberg as Laurel, and Fritz Weaver as Maitland.
The main differences between Gauguin and Strickland are that Gauguin was French rather than English, and whilst Maugham describes the character of Strickland as being largely ignorant of his contemporaries in Modern art (as well as largely ignorant of other artists in general), Gauguin himself was well acquainted with and exhibited with the Impressionists in the 1880s and lived for a while with Van Gogh in southern France.