Lady Chatterley's Lover

I'm a little bit fed up with people condemning this book for use of the c-word and a bit of bedroom bush between lady and gardner lover. Classified back then as disgusting porn, give me a break! Times move on.

I'm also a bit fed up with people slagging off this book for being too old fashioned and tame, with not enough bedroom action.

It was written in 1928!

This book is evocative of what it must have been like to live in Sheffield in northern England in the 1920s. Most people worked down the pits or ecked out a living working for a rich landowner, or both.

Women in privileged social positions - think Emma Bovary or Elizabeth Bennet - got bored sitting around the house like everyone else, especially those with crippled husbands who could only make them feel alive intellectually.

Lady Chatterley wanted to get down to a bit of dirty and there's nothing wrong with that, although this is perceived as emotionally and sexually corrupt for its time!

Yes, this book is too slow paced for younger audiences hoping for porno romance and legs akimbo from page one. They definitely get jiggy with it and break some social rules, but it still deserves more than the literary fallow land it seems to reside in these days as too explicit on the one hand but not explicit enough for modern readers.

D.H. Lawrence is a wonderfully evocative writer who knows how to build up emotions through subtlety and tension over many chapters. The sense of stateliness and propriety crossing over social boundaries is described to perfection. Accept the author as a great writer and you can move on with overly high expectations and instead enjoy the literary skill on display.