Maurice, ‘This Is Acid’.

To mark LGBT History Month, 2013, Polari asked its contributors to recall a song that had an impact their own stories.

“My debut as a gay man was also my introduction to a genre of music that would change my life. Previously, my musical tastes had reflected my sense of sadness, of difference, of division. But, coming out made me feel happy.”

★★★★★
564 pages • Picador • May 24, 2012 [PB]

An historical, family saga; a monumental novel that is greater than Hollinghurst’s works to date.

“At the risk of sounding an irreverent note (and without wishing in any way to belittle Hollinghurst’s towering achievement) there is more than a fleeting suggestion of Brideshead Revisted-meets-Downton Abbey in The Stranger’s Child.”

Polari’s Editor Writes His Coming Out Story.

This is the first in a new Polari Magazine series.

“Maurice armed me with a phrase that I still use to this day, for the most part because it’s so funny: “I’m an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort,” as the hero tells his therapist. It was that exact phrase I used when I came out to my friend.”

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.

★★★★★
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.

★★★★★
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.