description: Strictly Personal, like The Summing Up, is no formal piece of autobiography. It deals with the events of a few months, and with those events only as they affect the narrator. It begins in the village of Cap Ferrat, at the Villa Mauresque, the author's home overlooking the Mediterranean, and ends at La Guardia Airport. Between these two points lies a sharply defined period of life, filled with events, some sensational, some unique, some tragic, some at times all three. There is perilous adventure, in the long voyage of a broken-down, over-crowded collier, that might have been Conrad's Nan-Shan, were not its passengers fleeing residents of the Riviera rather than Chinese coolies. There is brilliant reporting in Maugham's description of the crumbling of the French spirit. There is sound prophecy in his analysis of what post-war England will be like.Like The Summing Up, this may well become one of Maugham's influential books. Parts have been published in the Saturday Evening Post and Redbook. They are here rewritten and brought together in the form originally intended.
language: English
title: Strictly Personal
titlecomplete: Strictly Personal
ratings_count: 32
publisher: Arno Press