EM Forster's Legacy of Connection: Unseen Memorabilia

The novelist E.M. Forster’s famous maxim was ‘only connect.' A member of the ‘Bloomsbury set’ who lived in Brunswick Square for years, Morgan Forster acted out this maxim in his life.

A lifelong believer in gay rights and critic of restrictions based on race and class, he famously had a 30-year friendship with working-class policeman Bob Buckingham. But the connection did not end there. Forster had a wider influence on the whole Buckingham family, including Bob’s nephew Jim Buckingham who was inspired to follow privately his passion for painting.

Now in his 80s, Jim Buckingham has — as well as never-recorded recollections of his ‘Uncle Morgan’ — a collection of never-before-seen Forster memorabilia, letters, photographs and his own unseen life’s work of paintings including portraits of Forster himself, Bob Buckingham and other family members, and a series around the theme of ancestry.

The housing of Jim’s 6-strong family in two rooms near King’s Cross was mentioned by Morgan in Two Cheers for Democracy. For Jim as a child, the walk to Bloomsbury’s Coram’s Fields was a regular escape from their overcrowded living situation.

The exhibition offers new insights into E.M. Forster’s legacy of connection, as well as into Bloomsbury working class history.