E.M. Forster and Bob Buckingham's Legacy
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StenoE.M. Forster and Bob Buckingham's Legacy
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StenoForster was awarded a
Benson Medal in 1937. In the 1930s and 1940s Forster became a notable
broadcaster on BBC Radio, and while George Orwell was the BBC India Section talks producer from
1941 to 1943, he commissioned from Forster a weekly book review. [20] Forster became publicly
associated with the British Humanist Association. In addition to his broadcasting, he advocated
individual liberty and penal reform and opposed censorship by writing articles, sitting on committees
and signing letters.
Forster was open about his homosexuality to his close friends, but not to the public. He never
married, but he had a number of male lovers during his adult life. [21] He developed a long-term
relationship with Bob Buckingham (1904–1975), a married policeman. [22] Forster included
Buckingham and his wife May 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 Christopher Isherwood, the poet Siegfried
Sassoon, and the Belfast-based novelist Forrest Reid. He was a close friend of the socialist poet and
philosopher Edward Carpenter, and it was a visit to Carpenter and his much younger lover George
Merrill in 1913 that inspired Forster's novel Maurice, which is partly based on the couple.[23]
In 1960, Forster began a relationship with the Bulgarian emigre Mattei Radev, a picture framer and
art collector who moved in Bloomsbury group circles. He was Forster's junior by 46 years. They met
at Long Crichel House, a Georgian rectory in Long Crichel, Dorset, a country retreat shared
by Edward Sackville-West and the gallery-owner and artist Eardley Knollys.[24][25]
Forster lived in this house, home of his friends Robert and May Buckingham, and died here on 7 June 1970.
The sign on the wall above the garage door marks the 100th anniversary of his birth
From 1925 until his mother's death at age 90 in March 1945, Forster lived with her at the house
West Hackhurst in the village of Abinger Hammer, Surrey, finally leaving in September 1946.[26] His
London base was 26 Brunswick Square from 1930 to 1939, after which he rented 9 Arlington Park
Mansions in Chiswick until at least 1961.[27][28] After a fall in April 1961, he spent his final years in
Cambridge at King's College.[29]
Forster was elected an honorary fellow of King's College, Cambridge, in January 1946,[27] and lived
for the most part in the college, doing relatively little. In April 1947 he arrived in America to begin a
three-month nationwide tour of public readings and sightseeing, returning to the East Coast in June.
[30]
He declined a knighthood in 1949 and was made a Companion of Honour in 1953. [27] At age 82, he
wrote his last short story, Little Imber, a science fiction tale. According to his friend Richard
Marquand, Forster was highly critical of American foreign policy in his latter years. This was one of
the reasons why he consistently refused offers to adapt his novels for the screen, because Forster
felt that such productions would inevitably involve American financing. [31]
At 85 he went on a pilgrimage to the Wiltshire countryside that had inspired his favourite novel The
Longest Journey, escorted by William Golding.[30] In 1969 he was made a member of the Order of
Merit. Forster died of a stroke[32] on 7 June 1970 at the age of 91, at the Buckinghams' home
in Coventry, Warwickshire.[27] His ashes, mingled with those of Buckingham, w
