Regular visitors to Whitstable will know that the Kent seaside town’s favourite son is the late Hammer horror actor Peter Cushing. (Van Helsing, to those of us of a certain age). Cushing even has a Wetherspoons named after him – and celebrity doesn’t get any more stellar than that.
Fewer people, however, will be aware that W. Somerset Maugham (died 1965), once the world’s best-selling author, also hails from Whitstable. Perhaps because Maugham is reckoned to have hated the town.
One Whitstable business nevertheless keen to publicise Maugham’s roots is Parry Law. The solicitors firm has a huge mural of him on its Oxford Street office (pictured), which happens to be next door to the self-same ’Spoons.
As well it might. For a little digging discloses that while Maugham’s father was a prominent solicitor, his grandfather actually co-founded the 200-year-old Law Society of England and Wales. So in this of all weeks, it seems fitting to doff our cap to the high-achieving Maugham clan.
By coincidence, perhaps, Parry’s entrance arch is markedly similar to Chancery Lane’s (see below). Very appropriate, but surely lost on almost every passer-by.
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