![]() Hugh Grant and James Wilby give fine and intelligent performances as Clive Durham and Maurice Hall, two exquisitely beautiful young men up at Cambridge in the years before the first world war. It is not simply gay sex that is rejected, but sexual pleasure itself. But then they were required to endure decades of conformism and dreary work in – as here – stockbroking or a mediocre political career. Britain’s educated classes may be encouraged at the age of 19 or 20 to study classics and make a poignantly brief acquaintance with the ancient Greeks and their idea of love. It tells us much more about a certain kind of unformulated English discontent, suppressed hysteria and the idealised longing for beauty in the aftermath of the Oscar Wilde trial. ![]() ![]() Its fascination and power are even more intense 30 years on. ![]()
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