William Somerset Maugham, the most successful English writer of early twentieth century, and equally despised - perhaps, because of his popularity - by the highbrow of literary world,  was of undistinguished appearance in his youth. However, he developed deep, impressive wrinkles as he grew old . These gave his face a sagacious character in his dotage. It appears he had a paintable face. For, he was painted by the most popular portraitist of his time. Gerald kelly was the most prolific, painting him eighteen times.  But the most famous portrait of Maugham, by which he is recognised by the posterity was done by the painter Graham Sutherland in 1949, when Maugham was seventy five. Sutherland had never done a portrait earlier. After Maugham’s painting, he became a coveted potraitist, and did pictures of many eminent public figures of the time including Churchill.  Maugham invited Sutherland to stay at Villa Mauresque for seven days. He did many pencil and charcoal studies of...

  A treatise on Love I bought the gracefully printed hardcover, first edition of Graham Greene’s The Captain and the Enemy , printed by Reinhardt Books of London, in August, 2010. This was Green’s last novel which he published in 1988 three years before his death at the age of 87. A cryptic note that I wrote on the title page – I thought, then, that this gave a personal touch to my books, a practice I abandoned soon – tells me I bought it quite cheap from strandbookstall.com. Strand Book Stall, the iconic book shop, in Fort, Bombay, was started by T.N. Shanbhag in 1948 and closed down in 2018. In last few years, I read with horror, and sadness, as similar fate visited many such legendary bookshops in other cities: Lal Advani’s bookshop in Hazrat Ganj, Lucknow, T.S. Shanbaug’s Premier Bookshop on Church Street in Bangalore, V.G. Mani’s Manney’s bookstore in the camp area of Pune. These were in business for more than half a century, established before 1947, but, I believe, could ...