The extraordinary story of E.M Forster's clandestine gay novel, Maurice - part of the BBC's Gay Britannia season.

Maurice

The writer Edward Morgan Forster, but better known as E.M Forster‘s gay love story was a forbidden book. Written in 1913, inspired by a touch on the buttocks, Maurice was only published in 1971 after Forster died. For almost 60 years it was a secret manuscript, clandestinely circulating among those Forster trusted, including Lytton Strachey, Leonard Woolf, Siegfried Sassoon and Christopher Isherwood.

For years he refused Isherwood’s pressure to publish, until finally acquiescing to a posthumous publication, and sending the typescript by trusted couriers from Cambridge to America. In this programme, biographer Wendy Moffat talks about how she pieced together the details of this journey, scholar Philip Gardner looks at the manuscript changes and writer Peter Parker discusses Isherwood’s influence on the finished novel.

This programme is part of Gay Britannia, a season of programming across the BBC marking the 50th anniversary of The Sexual Offences Act 1967, celebrating the LGBTQ community, challenging existing preconceptions and prejudices, casting a fresh light on the history of gay Britain, and exploring what it means to be gay in Britain today.

Producer: Sarah Conkey

Sunday 9 July 6.45pm-7.30pm BBC Radio 3

Photo by BBC

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