The case of My Policeman (2012/2022): sex, lies, Forster’s love triangle and promotional biofictionality

Set mainly in late-1950s Brighton, but bookended by a 1999 ‘present’, Bethan Roberts’ novel My Policeman, published by Random House in 2012, tells the story of a love triangle between two men – sophisticated art curator Patrick and his younger lover, policeman Tom – and a woman – Marion, a schoolteacher – at a date when male homosexuality remained an imprisonable criminal offence in England, prior to its partial decriminalisation in 1967. Marion, the story’s main narrator, marries Tom with no inkling of his sexuality or the true nature of his existing relationship with Patrick, which continues. On realising the truth, she acts in jealousy – and bigotry – with consequences for all three.

Roberts’ novel was warmly reviewed. In contrast, the reception of its 2022 feature-film adaptation backed by Amazon Studios has been strikingly vicious (with the venom centrally directed at the casting of Harry Styles as Tom). My paper will unpick the excess of negativity towards My Policeman the film in relation to this conference’s framing concern – who may write, tell or perform a particular story? – but also by reconnecting both novel and film with Roberts’ initial biographical inspiration for My Policeman, which the published text erases. Originally billed as a novel inspired by the novelist E. M. Forster’s enduring, and extraordinary, real-life relationship with the policeman Bob Buckingham and Bob’s wife May from the 1930s until Forster’s death in 1970, My Policeman’s published text – and the film – tell an almost wholly different story, in a different timeline, less fascinating than the facts that inspired it. This last point has not been lost on some of the film’s critics. None seem aware, however, that two stage bio-dramas exploring the Forster–Bob–May relationship already exist as scripts: Scott C. Sickles’ Nonsense and Beauty, staged briefly in the USA in 2016 after a 20-year genesis; and Charles Leipart’s A Kind of Marriage which at 2017 was in development, and received a rehearsed reading at the Donmar’s rehearsal rooms in London. with Alex Jennings as Forster, but has yet to be staged. In contrast with Roberts’ My Policeman, both scripts have yet to attract rights sales (or even a full theatrical staging), reminding us of the close, and particular, relationship between ‘the adaptation industry’ and corporate book publishing (Murray 2012).