Claire Buck and E. M. Forster

“Hiding out in Alexandria: E.M. Forster’s Great War”

The famous English modernist author E. M. Forster spent the First World War in Egypt searching out information on missing soldiers for the Red Cross.  His time in Alexandria is recognized as pivotal in his development as a “gay archivist” and a critic of British colonial policy.  Yet Forster’s literary response to Alexandria amounts to no more than a tourist guidebook and a handful of essays.  Claire Buck will be talking about what she learned about the significance of wartime Alexandria for Forster’s writing from her recent trip to the E.M. Forster archive at King’s College, Cambridge.

A complete list of this semester’s lunch talks may be found here.