Picked this up while desperately trying to spend some money at Church Christmas Fair - and therefore it is in a sense a random 'next book' however there were more points of connection with the recently read Orwell and Koestler than might have expected.
I found this a dark read and perhaps to its credit there is not redemption in it conclusion - at least not in any straight forward sense. Its setting in a minor public school (of all the locations this is the one that seems to have the strongest influence of the actions of the characters) is one of the connections - the narration of life in the school is full of many of the same critiques of the public school 'system' that Orwell was making half a century later. It is a book populated we people on the edge of brilliance and yet the distance between them and true greatness seems only to widen with each act of theirs to achieve it. In the critique of "respectability" Forster clearly romanticises the 'working man' and the wildness of the open country - it is in the untamed passions of both that authenticity is found.
I also enjoyed the fact that Baldock Church, of which my Father was sometime Rector, gets a mention. While brief it is true to the vast majority of the world's encounter, as it is seen through the window, at speed, on the way to Cambrigde.
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