The House of Doors is a work of fiction; nonetheless, it features characters and events drawn from history. Ethel Proudlock’s murder trial took place in 1911, but I have set it in 1910 to coincide with Sun Yat Sen’s extended stay in Penang.
The following books were helpful to me in the writing of my novel:
A Writer’s Notebook by W. Somerset Maugham (William Heinemann, 1949)
The Summing Up by W. Somerset Maugham (William Heinemann, 1938)
The Gentleman in the Parlour by W. Somerset Maugham (William Heinemann, 1930)
The Casuarina Tree by W. Somerset Maugham (William Heinemann, 1926)
The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham by Selena Hastings (John Murray, 2009)
Willie: The Life of W. Somerset Maugham by Robert Calder (Heinemann, 1989)
Somerset and All the Maughams by Robin Maugham (The New American Library, 1966)
Conversations with Willie by Robin Maugham (W. H. Allen, 1978)
Somerset Maugham by Ted Morgan (Triad Granada, 1981)
Remembering Mr. Maugham by Garson Kanin (Bantam, 1973)
Murder on the Verandah by Eric Lawlor (HarperCollins, 1999)
Sun Yat-Sen by Marie-Claire Bergère (Stanford University Press, 1998)
The Unfinished Revolution: Sun Yat-Sen and the Struggle for Modern China by Tjio Kayloe (Marshall Cavendish, 2017)
Sun Yat Sen in Penang by Khoo Salma Nasution (Areca Books, 2008)
My deepest gratitude to the staff of the excellent National Archives of Singapore for their warm welcome and unstinting assistance. It was a pleasure to visit the archives to conduct my research.
And to Dr Patrick Tan: thank you for our long and entertaining conversations about Somerset Maugham, and for your friendship.