Is 'My Policeman' Based on a True Story?

If you're a fan of Brokeback Mountain and Call Me by Your Name you won't want to miss My Policeman.

The movie, starring Harry Styles, Emma Corrin and David Dawson, follows Tom Burgess (played by Styles), a policeman who falls in love with Marion (Corrin), a Brighton-based school teacher.

At the same time, Tom begins a same-sex affair with Patrick Hazelwood (Dawson), a museum curator, with each individual risking everything to get what they want.

The movie is an emotional rollercoaster, exploring a complicated love triangle between three friends and how its consequences affect them in their later years.

Is it based on a true story? Newsweek has everything you need to know.

Is My Policeman Based on a True Story?

Yes, My Policeman is loosely based on a true story. It's an adaption of Bethan Roberts' 2012 novel of the same.

However, Roberts's original story was inspired by the life of the great English author E.M. Forster.

Forster's best-known works include Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), A Room with a View (1908), Howards End (1910) and A Passage to India (1924). He also co-authored the opera Billy Budd (1951).

As a result of his writing talents, Forster was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature on 20 separate occasions, although he never won.

Forster was in a long-term relationship with Bob Buckingham, a married policeman.

Writing in The Guardian about the backstory to her 2012 novel, author Roberts said: "While living with May, Buckingham pledged his half days off, and other hours during the week, to Forster.

"May, although jealous and often difficult, refused to listen when [warned] that Forster was about to break up her marriage. Perhaps she, like Buckingham, stood to gain from what Forster could offer: not only money (he often gave financial gifts), but also enter into the life of the cultural elite."

Just like in the movie, there was a considerable age difference between Forster and Buckingham. Forster was 51 years old and Buckingham was 28. In My Policeman the movie, it's not clear what the exact age difference is, but Patrick is noted to be a little older.

In My Policeman, Patrick and Tom's wife Marion are close friends and in real life, Forster was good friends with Buckingham's wife May. Their larger group of friends included writer J.R. Ackerley, psychologist W.J.H. Sprott, and the opera composer Benjamin Britten.

Just like Patrick in My Policeman, Forster never married, but he was known to have a number of male lovers during his adult life. Just like Tom, Buckingham stayed married to his wife May for over 40 years.

The real Forster died of a stroke on June 7, 1970, at the age of 91 at the home of Bob and May Buckingham in Coventry in central England.

His ashes were later mixed and scattered with Buckingham's in the rose garden of Coventry's crematorium, near Warwick University.

The end of Forster's life also influenced the story of My Policeman.

At the beginning of the movie My Policeman, Patrick comes to live with Marion and Tom after suffering a debilitating stroke. Thankfully, Patrick and Tom don't die together at the end of My Policeman, but when the movie concludes, they are left standing together, their whole life behind them.

My Policeman is also set against a true historical background. The movie takes place in 1950s Brighton, at a time when homosexuality was illegal and an imprisonable offense, which both Tom and Patrick know all too well.

It wasn't until 1967 that the U.K. government passed the Sexual Offences Act that decriminalized homosexuality between men over the age of 21 in private. Scotland didn't follow suit until 1980 and Northern Ireland until 1982.

However, all anti-gay laws weren't removed in the U.K. until 2009, when Scotland decriminalized sodomy under the Sexual Offences (Scotland) Act.

To research the setting for her novel, My Policeman, Roberts shared with Vogue that she read novels, newspapers and memoirs. She spoke with her parents who came of age in the 1950s and cited the oral history collection Daring Hearts: Gay and Lesbian Lives in 1950s and 1960s Brighton as the "most useful" insight into the local history of Brighton, adding: "Hearing the beautiful voices of the men and women who'd lived and loved through that repressive era was inspirational."

My Policeman is out in theaters now and coming to Amazon Prime on Friday, November 4.