Forster with Bob in 1934
E.M Forster the great novelist whose novel A Passage to India is well known to all of us, loved a man. Now loving a man in today's time is not a big deal but in those times it needed guts and our dear Forster had them in abundance. His poem Where Angels Fear to Tread makes a good line for his position as a Homo.Forster was a closeted homosexual and a lifelong bachelor. He developed a long-term, loving relationship with Bob Buckingham, a married policeman. Forster included Buckingham and his wife in his circle, which included J. R. Ackerley, a writer and literary editor of The Listener, the psychologist W. J. H. Sprott and, for a time, the composer Benjamin Britten. Other writers with whom Forster associated included the poet Siegfried Sassoon and the Belfast-based novelist Forrest Reid.
Wendy Moffat, associate professor of English at Dickinson College told the Sunday Times: 'He never had sex until he was 38, although he never had any doubts - even from a very young age - that he was gay.'
His creative drive disappeared after losing his virginity in his 30s to a wounded soldier on a beach in Egypt because he no longer felt able to write about the subjects upon which his reputation was based.
In one diary entry he wrote: 'I should have been a more famous writer if I had written or rather published more, but sex prevented the latter.'
Forster remained a bachelor throughout his life and his sexuality was only revealed when a gay novel, Maurice, was published posthumously.
Daasu Nah!
