Robert Douglas-Fairhurst

The laureate of repression

Housman may have had difficulty expressing himself, according to Peter Parker, but thousands of British soldiers took A Shropshire Lad to the Front

issue 02 July 2016

In 1927, while delivering the lectures that would later be published as Aspects of the Novel, E.M. Forster made a shy attempt to get to know his Cambridge neighbour, the classical scholar A.E. Housman. At first all appeared to be going well. After one lecture the two men dined together, and Housman told Forster ‘with a twinkle’ that he enjoyed visiting Paris ‘to be in unrespectable company’.

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