The movie Maurice is a very close adaptation of E M Forster’s novel of the same name. Like the book, it starts very slowly and seems pre-occupied with the theological and philosophical debates of a group of upper class Cambridge students in Edwardian England.

But the ‘theoretical’ debates about human nature soon begin to build into more personal – albeit cautious – exploration of sexual identity.

For the eponymous Maurice (James Wilby), it begins when his close friend ‘Durham’ (Hugh Grant) declares his love for him. Maurice is initially appalled at the declaration but eventually begins to be quite excited by it. But just as Maurice begins warming to the idea, Durham announces his engagement to a woman and downplays his earlier declaration of affection.

Unsurprisingly, this triggers major confusion in Maurice and he responds in the typical Edwardian way by seeing his feelings as a dangerous illness that must be cured. However, his plans quickly come unstuck when he encounters Durham’s very good-looking gamekeeper Scudder (played by Rupert Graves). It’s not helped when young Scudder climbs into his bedroom – and his bed – one night: how could Maurice possibly resist?

Maurice is an accurate representation of what life would have been like for gay men in Edwardian England. The social stigma, the perception of being sick and the constant fear of blackmail and imprisonment. Indeed, so repressive was Edwardian society that E M Forster felt unable to publish the work during his lifetime: even though he wrote it in 1914 it wasn’t published until after his death in 1971.

It does have a happy ending – of sorts – although it’s likely that Forster would have realised that that was nothing more than a distant dream. The reality would have been very different.