Q&A: Turning Down a Knighthood

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Live from Sheffield DocFest, it's E. M. Forster: who in his 91 years of life was one of Britain’s most successful novelists. He was raised in a climate of Victorian propriety so extreme he went to university without understanding human reproduction, and then fell in with a secret society known for alternative thinking and "aggressive" homosexuality. Italy — and later India — represented paradises of freedom and liberation in comparison to the cramped, horrid Edwardian upper middle classes. Erotic contact with the working-class/brown Other was the waters of Lourdes for this uptight Englishman, who was never able to transcend his own position.

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SOURCES

Wendy Moffat, E. M. Forster: A New Life (Bloomsbury, 2010).

https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-a-man-out-of-time-e-m-forsters-a-passage-to-india-at-100-and-the-legacies-of-colonialism-236324

https://www.varsity.co.uk/features/25279

http://www.glbtqarchive.com/ssh/cambridge_apostles_S.pdf

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/11/06/forster-love-story/

https://variety.com/2017/film/global/james-ivory-why-wont-u-s-actors-do-nude-scenes-starting-with-call-me-by-your-name-stars-1202581485/

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/03/23/man-with-a-past

https://www.exploringsurreyspast.org.uk/themes/subjects/diversity/lgbt-history/fwwhomosexuality/forster-fww/#

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/feb/17/e-m-forster-my-policeman

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v35/n01/alan-hollinghurst/poor-dear-how-she-figures

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/books/review/Toibin-t.html

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