Forcibly quarantined on a rain-swept Island with unyielding Christian missionaries was always bound to lead to friction, but no-one could have guessed how bad it could get.

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....."

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.

Abridged by Eileen Horne
Read by Lucy Robinson
Directed by Eoin O'Callaghan
Produced by Clive Brill.
A Brill Production for BBC Radio 4 Extra. Show less