The author provides an original view of the writer she believes to be the greatest British novelist this century. Armed with new material, she places Forster formally in the context of his work to produce a life history which is both a literary detective story and an imaginative creation of the writer's inner world. Nicola Beauman writes with insight on Forster's lifelong relationships with his mother and great-aunts, reveals the way in which Forster's major novels stemmed from his personal relationships, and in particular suggests through use of new material who the originals for Forster's homosexual novel Maurice were, and what the writing of that book cost him.