EM Forster's personal passage to India was the key to both his greatest novel and his political radicalism. What drew this shy and retiring figure from British suburbia to the mysterious heart of a faraway subcontinent? Taking a fresh look at the links between Forster's homosexuality, his critique of the Raj and his remarkably modern capacity for crossing racial and cultural borders. Zareer Masani rescues Forster from the stereotype of an old-maidish, closeted gay, writing tea-table novels. Producer Ingrid Hassler