The Servant

Set in London just after the Second World War, Robin Maugham's slim, haunting novella is a confessional tale told in a simple, urgent voice by one Richard Merton. He tells the story of Tony, a close friend from the war, who breaking links with old friends and habits steadily comes under the influence of his sinister new butler, Barrett. Concerned for his friend, Richard slowly uncovers a strange affair in which both class and sexual barriers have disintegrated into a dark flux. Filmed in 1963 by Joseph Losey, with a screenplay by Harold Pinter, and starring Dirk Bogarde and James Fox, "The Servant" is one of the key British films of the 1960s. Robin Maugham (1916 1981) was a prolific author, a military officer, a barrister, and 2nd Viscount Maugham of Hartfield. In his autobiography, Escape from the Shadows, Maugham describes the three dark shadows of his life: his uncle W. Somerset Maugham, his father, and the guilt he suffered due to the "strict upper-middle-class moral convictions" that declared his homosexual desires to be perverse.