[rating=5]
368 pages • Atlantic Books • March 06, 2014 [HB]
Damon Galgut’s remarkable novel Arctic Summer imagines the life of the great novelist E.M. Forster and the conflicts that led him to write A Passage to India.

“Forster knew when his great work had been completed, and the wonder in Damon Galgut’s Arctic Summer is that it enables the reader to feel both the triumph as well as the pain at the heart of this conflict. “

Off the Virtual Page.

Today, December 3, is Polari Magazine‘s 5th birthday. Polari’s editor writes about how it stepped off the virtual pages this year and into the sensual world.

“Polari Magazine has had a whirlwind 5th year, and that’s thanks to the commitment of its contributors, who have kept the content fresh and alive as we diversified into projects that stepped away from its day-to-day running.”

[rating=5]
176 pages & 256 pages • Penguin English Library • 31 May & 27 September, 2012 [PB]

E.M. Forster’s Italian novels are full of beauty and conflict, and the film versions are but pale shadow.

“A Room With A View is a romantic comedy, and a more conventional book than Where Angels Fear To Tread. Forster was apprehensive about it, and he fretted over the quality of the character’s inner lives.”

E.M. Forster

The editor selects E.M. Forster for Polari Magazine’s list of LGBT Heroes. For UK LGBT History Month 2012.

Written in 1913-1914, Maurice is the story of a young man coming to terms with his homosexuality. It was passed amongst friends, yet it remained a secret, first because it would have been almost impossible to publish, and then because Forster guarded that secret, despite repeated attempts by Christopher Isherwood to have him publish.

[rating=4]
198 pages • Penguin • 1971

This pre-WW1 novel, finished in 1914 yet not published until 1971, is a great work about the struggle of Maurice Hall to come to terms with his sexuality.

In 1911 Forster wrote in his diary of his “weariness of the only subject that I both can and may treat – the love of men for women and vice versa”. In Maurice Forster tackled the subject of homosexuality and assessed what it meant. Maurice is as pioneering a book now as it was then.

[rating=4]
198 pages • Penguin • 1971

This pre-WW1 novel, finished in 1914 yet not published until 1971, is a great work about the struggle of Maurice Hall to come to terms with his sexuality.

In 1911 Forster wrote in his diary of his “weariness of the only subject that I both can and may treat – the love of men for women and vice versa”. In Maurice Forster tackled the subject of homosexuality and assessed what it meant. Maurice is as pioneering a book now as it was then.

Maurice, the book that helped me to understand my sexuality

How the book, following on from the film, changed the life of William Summers.

Maurice is not a great film. It is not even as great a book as Forster’s others. Yet at the age of sixteen I found it to be revolutionary.