What he is hoping to find for his ‘dignified’ bio is the reason why Driffield wrote his best work while with her, and not so much with the second wife who managed his career (and him). The first Mrs Driffield was a barmaid, so Alroy is interested in some salacious revelations, but not intending to include them. Urged on by Driffield’s legacy-building widow, the second Mrs Driffield, Alroy wants to plunder Ashenden’s memories of the Driffields from his days in Blackstable. Narrated by the author William Ashenden, Cakes and Ale tells the story of fellow-author Alroy Kear’s efforts to write a biography of the recently deceased Edward Driffield. The Introduction by Nicholas Shakespeare gossips about these and other correspondences, but really, the pleasure in reading this novel for contemporary readers comes from Maugham’s self-awareness of his own adolescent snobberies from the satirical depiction of literary circles and their modus operandi and from the wonderful portrait of Rosie Driffield which foreshadows the rise of independent women free from the stuffy constraints of prevailing social and sexual mores. Cakes and Ale is a piercing satire of British literary circles, and features (apparently) very recognisable portraits of authors Thomas Hardy, and Maugham’s erstwhile friend Horace Walpole. Maugham (1874-1965) was safely settled in the south of France when the storm broke over this book.

But here I am, delighted by my luck at discovering Cakes and Ale, said to be the favourite book of W. I didn’t have anything published in 1930 that I hadn’t already read on the shelves at home, and I was not expecting my library to come up trumps so quickly. Given my poor track record, no one is more surprised than me that I have finished my book on time for the 1930s Club, hosted by Karen at Kaggsy’s Bookish Rambings and Simon at Stuck in a Book.

Cakes and Ale by W. Somerset Maugham