Bad Gays

Author: Huw Lemmey & Ben Miller

A podcast about evil and complicated queers in history. Why do we remember our heroes better than our villains? Hosted by Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller. Learn more: www.badgayspod.com
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Genres: History

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E. M. Forster
Episode 130
Monday, 29 December, 2025

Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays on Apple Podcasts or Patreon to support our work, get monthly bonus episodes, and join our community of listeners! 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. ----more---- 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 Our intro music is Arpeggia Colorix by Yann Terrien, downloaded from WFMU's Free Music Archive and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. Our outro music is by DJ Michaeloswell Graphicsdesigner.