Connecting with E.M. Forster: A Memoir

Tim Leggatt knew E.M. Forster for the last half of his life, decades after the last of his acclaimed novels was published, and in this memoir he draws on the unpublished correspondence he held with Forster over this period, as well as journals of their travels together, Forster's own confidential diary and his Commonplace Book. 'In Forster's declining years,' Leggatt writes, 'his thoughts often concerned sex and his health, his increasing blindness and deafness, his hospital visits, all of which led him to think about death and how he would meet it and how others did. But this was not as gloomy as it may well sound. 'He was much concerned about the world's growing population and in this country about the disappearance of the countryside. I have also included many of his sharp and attractive descriptions of people and scenes, those of a very perceptive and thoughtful writer.'