Macadam works in the museum at Kuala Solor and despite his best intentions attracts the earnest attentions of the curator's Russian wife.

Interviewed in 1933, Maugham said "It has always seemed to me that literature can only find its fullest and freest expression in the essay or short story." He wrote more than 100 stories, at least 14 of which he burned on one of his "bonfire nights", after Winston Churchill warned that they contravened the Official Secrets Act. Of the stories that do survive, he said "some of them deal with circumstances and places to which the passage of time and the growth of civilisation will give a romantic glamour....."

What we plan to broadcast over the next year are twenty five of Maugham's best stories with tales from home and abroad. Tales of intrigue from far flung colonial outposts and tales of passion from quintessentially British hearths.

Maugham writes perfect vignettes - snapshots of human life in all its diversity - captured at a moment of crisis or revelation.

Read by Lucy Robinson
Abridged by Elaine Bedell
Produced by Clive Brill
A Brill Production for BBC Radio 4 Extra. Show less