The Gentleman in the Parlour

Mr. Maugham recently travelled from Rangoon by river to Mandalay, on horseback through the mountains and forests of the Shan States to Bangkok and by sea to Haiphong. Result: The Gentleman in the Parlour, a desultory sketch book, very little descriptive of the conventional "sights" but occupied, to our richer delight, with personal encounters and reflections by the way. These are the things that give every journey unique value but only the artist is sufficiently aware of that to shed the rest and keep only them' Horace Thorogood in the Evening Standard