‘It was Merrill, in fact, who set ‘Maurice’ in motion, by touching Forster’s bottom in the kitchen after lunch’

“I believe he touched most people’s,” Forster mused later, though the effect, in his case, was startling. In a moment, like a lightning flash, the plot and characters of his new novel appeared to him. He started writing it almost immediately and by the middle of the following year he was done.