Regular readers of this blog may remember that I have a deep-seated disdain for the entirely forgettable EM Forster, 'The cucumber sandwich of novelists'.

On reading this article, I have discovered these new tidbits of exciting Forster trivia:

Forster referred to his target middlebrow audience as 'Uncle Willie' for some weird reason - as in
'I just can't get Uncle Willie interested in my turgid pot-boilers'

He finds curiosity “one of the lowest of the human faculties” and humility “a quality for which I have only a limited admiration.”

Forster was always calling for more sex. He said "bodies are the instruments through which we register and enjoy the world". Yet his first sexual encounter, in Alexandria with an Egyptian bus driver, ended in his breaking his own arm through sheer awkwardness. (Not sure how one can do this, but it sounds mightily unenjoyable)

In the end Forster’s chief contribution has been to that continuing project of reinforcing liberals’ feelings of self-virtue owing to their lovely imaginative sensitivity and courageous distaste for social injustice.