W. Somerset Maugham
6 Chesterfield Street · one of the highest-paid writers of his age
Somerset Maugham was, for a time, the most commercially successful writer in the world – Of Human Bondage, The Razor’s Edge, a stream of stories and hit plays. He once said he was ‘three-quarters queer’, and his long relationships were with men, among them Gerald Haxton and later Alan Searle.
He lived at 6 Chesterfield Street in Mayfair in the years when his plays ruled the West End. English Heritage’s blue plaque marks the house.