Howards End

No wonder this book is often on the school syllabus. It is full of material for deep discussion and analysis.

The Wilcox family are wealthy with old-fashioned views. Mr Wilcox and his sons take the moral high ground and frown on the bohemian Schlegel sisters and their views on emancipation and patronism. The sisters befriend Mr Bast, a clerk, who also enjoys reading and music - seeing them as a way to raise himself from his lowly position.

This is one of the classics of modern English literature. A perfect book. The story puts the class system under the microscope and highlights its fallacies. If we could all Only Connect it would avoid misunderstandings. In the end Mr Wilcox is exposed as a hypocrite, and Mr Bast is crushed, quite literally, by culture. E.M. Forster decries the destruction of the traditional english landscape and the industrialisation of the cities. His language and descriptions are wonderfully warm and the text is filled with ideas and metaphor.




The film works very well in the adaptation of the story to a visual medium. It is rich and luxurious in its cinematography - you can almost smell the damp wood of Howard's End, the bluebells scorching warm tones in the pale light of the dusk. Anthony Hopkins is perfect as the gruff, starched Mr Wilcox and Emma Thompson at her best as Margaret Schlegel. The film gives more time to developing a relationship between Helen Schlegel and Leonard Bast, which works better than the impulsive sympathy sex act that results in a child in the book.

The score by Richard Robbins is perfect to listen to whilst reading the book. It has drama with crashing cymbals and sweeping violins, but also peaceful harmonies with piano that conjure up balmy evenings in an English garden.