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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

Sunday Feature

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Exploring music, history, science, philosophy, film, visual arts and literature.

In-depth documentaries which explore music, history, science, philosophy, film, visual arts and literature.

Sunday Feature: Literary Pursuits: Literary Pursuits: EM Forster's Maurice

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Literary Pursuits: EM Forster's Maurice

Literary Pursuits

BBC Radio 3 - Sunday Feature, Literary Pursuits, Literary Pursuits: EM Forster's Maurice

Exploring the long journey to publication of EM Forster's gay love story, Maurice.

Wendy Moffat explains the long journey to publication of EM Forster's gay love story, Maurice. From 1913 until 1971 it was a secret manuscript, circulating among Forster's friends.

Forster's gay love story was a forbidden book. Written in 1913, inspired by a touch on the buttocks, 'Maurice' was only published in 1971 after Forster died. Nevertheless, for almost sixty years, it was a secret manuscript, clandestinely circulating among those Forster trusted. They included Lytton Strachey, Leonard Woolf, Siegfried Sassoon and Christopher Isherwood. Isherwood's comments especially prompted Forster to re-write, adding a sex scene and altering the ending. But for years he refused Isherwood's pressure to publish, until finally acquiescing to a posthumous publication, and sending the typescript by trusted couriers from Cambridge to America. Biographer Wendy Moffat talks about how she pieced together the details of this journey, scholar Philip Gardner looks at the manuscript changes and writer Peter Parker discusses Isherwood's influence on the finished novel.

Sunday Feature: Literary Pursuits

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Sarah Dillon on the stories behind the stories of how great novels were written.

Sarah Dillon explores the stories behind the stories of how great works of literature were written.

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Literary Pursuits

Literary Pursuits: EM Forster's Maurice

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