Ashenden, or, The British Agent

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You cannot escape it, and should you take pains to guard against it, it will make use of those very pains to trip you up.

This meaningful and fresh storytelling is combined with a celebration of English design, resulting in a delightful read. And there's the tiresome revisionist history of 'Hitler was a bad man' so my character will be good and not be a fascist. The farcical nature of his missions, and the tragic fate of many of the spies, leave him disillusioned with espionage. Ashenden, written by Somerset Maugham and loosely based on his experiences as an MI6 agent during World War One, was published in 1928.There is a particular scene where a diplomat is telling Ashenden a story of his life, and the following dialogue takes place. Ashenden is a thinly disguised memoire of Maugham's own period in wartime (1914-1918) secret service work. Main Hi Kahaani Hoon”, an Audible Original is a weekly storytelling show of 20 episode from Audible, written-created-performed by Major Akhill Pratap; an ex-Army Officer popularly known as The Soldier and The Storyteller. Imagine having three life-coaches who had been through the toughest mental and physical challenges; a crack team of problem-solvers who knew in their day job that one mistake could be the difference between life - and death. Of course the book is of its time and stereotypes like this turn up in many other authors' works, but I find them harder to put up with here because the hero/narrator is so blissfully certain of his own superiority.

If, as in another review, I compare Fleming to boxing and Le Carré to chess, then I would say that Maugham is more like solitaire. This might explain why some of the less dramatic incidents, such as Miss King’s stroke and the Ambassador’s love affair (which, in fairness, is beautifully written), are included. It is definitely not the edge-of-your-seat stuff of later spy thrillers in which the work of intelligence gathering often becomes life-threatening business, although Maugham makes crystal clear that there are risks involved in what Ashenden does. Again, when Ashenden suggests that another agent has offered to carry out as assassination for money, R expostulates, “damn it all, we are gentlemen!Although,i must admit that I liked some of the stories-especially the vivid and poignant descriptions of love and doomed passion. This is a clever idea and it offers the opportunity for the author to link the stories of different individuals with the social and political history at the time and with the fate of the house itself. Un viaggio condito di ironia e cinismo, commedia più che suspense, e soprattutto scrittura piacevole, buona costruzione delle trame, succosi incastri. Alapvetően ez az atmoszféra az, amitől végig jó volt nekem a kötetben: a békebeli európaiság leheletét érezni benne, amire elviselhetetlen súllyal nehezedik a háttérben zajló világégés, az a világégés, ami aztán pozdorjává is zúzta a fenn említett békebeliséget. Csak a legeslegutolsó bekezdésben Maugham – merőben indokolatlanul – ne vágta volna hozzám a giccsgránátot.