While swagger portraits are fascinating and, revealing, it is significant that our authors are not the swaggering sort in their portraits (or books). This portrait of E M Forster (1911, private collection) by Roger Fry (1866-1934) is, appropriately for the subject, the antithesis of swagger. Pictured in a domestic Bloomsbury setting, he almost disappears into the folds of his plain, crumpled tweed suit - but we should not be deceived by appearances. For many reasons, Forster is a favourite novelist, and we publish Two Cheers for Democracy.