# Ashenden — Character guide

> Key figures in Ashenden by W. Somerset Maugham.

- [Ashenden](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ashenden_se/characters/ashenden.md): Ashenden drifts through Swiss hotels and Russian railway cars where exiles, agents, and informers dine at neighboring tables and pretend not to recognize one another. He is observant, ironic, and quietly troubled by supe
- [R.](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ashenden_se/characters/r.md): R. presides over the intelligence service with a gentleman's code and a taste for deniability: he desires the end but recoils from the means, and prefers that someone else shoulder the responsibility. His exchanges with 
- [Mr. Harrington](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ashenden_se/characters/mr_harrington.md): Mr. Harrington talks without pause or inflection, a stream of lava that overwhelms everything in its path, and Ashenden learns more about him than he ever wished to know. Proud of his English ancestry yet suspicious of n
- [Anastasia Alexandrovna Leonidov](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ashenden_se/characters/anastasia_alexandrovna_leonidov.md): Anastasia Alexandrovna moves through revolutionary circles with a woman of character's certainty, discussing Turgenev and Tolstoy while her gentle, unworthy husband Vladimir trails behind her. Ashenden's old passion for 
- [Giulia Lazzari](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ashenden_se/characters/giulia_lazzari.md): Giulia Lazzari arrives in Thonon under Ashenden's ambiguous custody: no handcuffs, no guards at her door, only a promise not to write or leave without his knowledge. She watches him with perplexity, unable to reconcile h
- [Miss King](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ashenden_se/characters/miss_king.md): Miss King enters Ashenden's world as an unremarkable Englishwoman abroad, precisely the sort of person no one would suspect of anything. Her ordinariness is her usefulness, and the service exploits it without much regard
- [The Hairless Mexican](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ashenden_se/characters/the_hairless_mexican.md): Manuel Carmona, known to the service only as the Hairless Mexican, arrives in Ashenden's world as one of R.'s hand-picked instruments — flamboyant, voluble, and unnervingly eager to prove himself. He shuffles fate out of
- [Gustav](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ashenden_se/characters/gustav.md): Gustav moves up and down the Rhine as a Swiss commercial traveller, gathering troop movements and munitions intelligence so reliable that R. holds his reports up as models for every other agent. Paid better than his coll
- [Grantley Caypor](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ashenden_se/characters/grantley_caypor.md): Caypor bursts into the dull dining-room of a Swiss hotel with a resonant voice, a bull-terrier named Fritzi, and an appetite for beer that makes the whole room sit up. He is English, his wife is German, and his fluent Ge
- [Mrs. Caypor](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ashenden_se/characters/mrs_caypor.md): Mrs. Caypor sits beside her husband in the pension dining-room, self-effaced and dusty, the sort of woman Ashenden would not have noticed twice — until she murmurs something to Caypor and his eyes turn, sharp and apprais
- [Sir Herbert Witherspoon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ashenden_se/characters/sir_herbert_witherspoon.md): A pompous British diplomat with a taste for fine dining.
- [Chandra Lal](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ashenden_se/characters/chandra_lal.md): An Indian revolutionary plotting against British rule.
- [Byring](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ashenden_se/characters/byring.md): A British officer involved in a dangerous mission in Russia.
- [Vladimir Semenovich Leonidov](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ashenden_se/characters/vladimir_semenovich_leonidov.md): An exiled Russian revolutionary with a volatile temper.
- [The General](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ashenden_se/characters/the_general.md): A high-ranking Russian military figure in exile.
- [Prince Ali](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ashenden_se/characters/prince_ali.md): A flamboyant Albanian prince with a taste for luxury.
- [Dr. Egon Orth](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ashenden_se/characters/dr_egon_orth.md): A German spy posing as a dentist in Switzerland.
- [Mr. Wilbur Schäfer](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ashenden_se/characters/mr_wilbur_schafer.md): An American businessman with a suspicious interest in European politics.
- [The Baroness von Higgins](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ashenden_se/characters/the_baroness_von_higgins.md): A German spy operating under the guise of a socialite.
- [Fritzi](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ashenden_se/characters/fritzi.md): A young German woman working as a maid in a Swiss hotel.
- [Manuel Carmona](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ashenden_se/characters/manuel_carmona.md): A Spanish agent with a shadowy past.
- [Madame Lazzari](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ashenden_se/characters/madame_lazzari.md): Giulia Lazzari's elderly mother.
- [Constantine Andreadi](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ashenden_se/characters/constantine_andreadi.md): A Greek businessman with ties to German intelligence.
- [Professor Z.](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ashenden_se/characters/professor_z.md): A reclusive academic with secret knowledge.
- [Rose Auburn](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ashenden_se/characters/rose_auburn.md): An Englishwoman caught up in the Russian Revolution.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/ashenden_se/characters