Alan Searle (1905–1985) became the private secretary and companion of
W. Somerset Maugham following the death of
Gerald Haxton in 1944. He took up residence at Maugham's villa on the Riviera and remained with him until Maugham's death in 1965.
Maugham first met Searle in 1928, when Searle was "a very youthful looking twenty-three, a working class boy from Bermondsey, the son of a Dutch tailor and cockney mother".
[Selina Hastings, ''The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham'', p. 344] He was the lover of several famous older men, including
Lytton Strachey
Giles Lytton Strachey (; 1 March 1880 – 21 January 1932) was an English writer and critic. A founding member of the Bloomsbury Group and author of ''Eminent Victorians'', he established a new form of biography in which psychology, psychologic ...
, who called Searle his "Bronzino boy".
Searle developed an antagonistic relationship with Maugham's daughter,
Liza. In his final years, Maugham made an unsuccessful attempt to disinherit his daughter and to adopt Searle as his son.
Following Maugham's death, Searle went into retirement in
Monte Carlo
Monte Carlo ( ; ; or colloquially ; , ; ) is an official administrative area of Monaco, specifically the Ward (country subdivision), ward of Monte Carlo/Spélugues, where the Monte Carlo Casino is located. Informally, the name also refers to ...
. He was interviewed by the scholar
Robert Calder when Calder was writing his biography of Maugham. Searle died in 1985.
References
1905 births
1985 deaths
British writers
People from Bermondsey
English people of Dutch descent
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