06 Feb EM Forster

EM Forster – born in London in 1879 – was a well-regarded novelist and short story writer. He was nominated 16 times for the Nobel Prize for Literature, but never won. Five of his six novels, which examine class differences and hypocrisy, were successfully adapted as feature films. A Room with a View (1908) was directed as a movie by James Ivory in 1985. This was followed in 1992 by Ivory’s movie of Howards End (1910). David Lean’s final film was his 1984 adaptation of A Passage to India (1924), Forster’s most successful novel.

Forster died in Coventry in 1970 aged 91 and was buried in the city’s Canley Garden Cemetery. The only memorial to him is the modest “Only Connect” monument in Stevenage (30 miles north of London). Forster spent much of his youth nearby and this area is the setting for Howards End, whose motto is “Only Connect”. Also worth visiting is Piney Copse in Abinger, near Dorking (30 miles south of London). Forster lived nearby and bought the wood to save it from development, then bequeathed it to the National Trust.