In 1926, Maugham bought the Villa La Mauresque, on 9 acres (3.6 hectares) at Cap Ferrat on the French Riviera. It was his home for most of the rest of his life. There he hosted one of the great literary and social salons of the 1920s and 1930s. He continued to be highly productive, writing plays, short stories, novels, essays and travel books. By 1940, when the collapse of France and its occupation by the German Third Reich forced Maugham to leave the French Riviera, he was a refugee—but one of the wealthiest and most famous writers in the English-speaking world.