E M Forster began writing Maurice in 1910 and finished it in 1914, its impetus being the unexplained suicide of his friend and contemporary Ernest Merz in the summer of 1909. Maurice is a novel about how things might have been in a less repressive society. This is a still from the end of the (excellent) 1987 film: despite society’s constraints, the lovers (played by James Wilby and Rupert Graves) will have an enduring relationship.