Lady Chatterley’s lawyer


The legal battle over DH Lawrence’s book was a crucial step in the freedom of writing. It also gave the papers a field day, says Jonathan Sale


T


he innocence of Lady Chatterley’’ was the Evening Standard’s splash on its West End Final that both the literary and the unliterary world had been


waiting for. On 2 November 1960 came the triumphant conclusion (for defence QC Gerald Gardiner) of what was later described as ‘the most important trial ever held at the Old Bailey’. There was no one in the dock of court no 1, neither the heroine of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, who was fictitious, nor author DH Lawrence, who was dead. The man having his collar felt, publisher Sir Allen Lane [pictured right leaving the trial with Lady Lane] had been allowed to sit with his solicitors during the proceedings. He featured in the second lead on the Standard’s front page: ‘ “Now we can go ahead” says Penguin chief.’ The third lead, devoted to the historic case, was ‘Fresh air blows though England’, a quote from Lawrence’s joyful stepdaughter. On 20 October, Penguin Books had gone


waddling into the Old Bailey at the start of the trial, possibly to have its flippers smacked for publishing ‘an obscene article, the book “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” ’. Had it been first published today, the novel might at worst be nominated for a Bad Sex Award (“… strange thrills rippling inside her. Rippling, rippling, rippling…”). On the result of the trial in 1960 rested the


fate of 200,000 copies already printed and locked in a warehouse, ready to be whisked into bookshops. Or pulped, in which case Lane, the chief Penguin who had put a lot of eggs into the Lawrence basket, would have been looking at a substantial loss instead of a substantial profit. It


16 | theJournalist


would have been not Lane but the opponents of the fledgling Permissive Society who would have been dancing in the Strand. Geoffrey Robertson QC has flagged up the


crucial importance of this trial. A contributor 50 years later to the commemorative edition of the novel, he declared the verdict to be “a crucial


In June 1928, two years before DH Lawrence’s death, 1,000 copies of Lady Chatterley’s Lover are printed privately in Florence and, in 1929, another edition is published in Paris. Copies are impounded by Customs at British ports. August 1959 The Obscene


Publications Act allows a book to be judged as a whole, not just on individual passages. In January 1960, Penguin decides to publish Lady Chatterley’s Lover – unexpurgated. In July, when 200,000 copies are being printed, the public prosecutor’s nephew, over dinner with Penguin’s printers, warns his uncle will prosecute. Publication date (25 August) is cancelled. Penguin hands 12 copies to Scotland Yard to kick off legal proceedings. 20 October The trial of


step towards the freedom of the written word. It was the gate through which the Sixties swung.” The press certainly stampeded through that wide open door. The trial was the gift that went on giving, day after day of men in wigs reading out explicit passages – a fraction of the book but a large portion of the trial – describing adulterous, alfresco love-making between a baronet’s wife and a gamekeeper possessed of a potent ‘John Thomas’. For cartoonists, late October meant an early Christmas. The News of the World gagman depicted the


consternation in court at the entrance of an elderly rustic hobbling up to announce with a leer: “Oi were Lady Chatterley’s lover.” As the judge’s disapproval of the novel became increasingly apparent, the Daily Mail showed one worried penguin squawking to another: “I’ve been feeling terribly sub judice these last few days!” A Daily Herald cartoon showed a vicar’s wife, struggling over a crossword, who asks her shocked husband for help: “A four-letter word in common use?” The Herald was one of only two papers (the other being, naturally, The Guardian) whose reports dared to spell out the actual four-letter words uttered in court; the red-tops hid them modestly under a shower of asterisks. More obliquely, a cartoon in Punch magazine


picked up on a point made by those who said that the book was, despite its enthusiastic sex scenes, fundamentally pure at heart (a classics teacher told the court it would be suitable for her pupils). A disappointed vendor of saucy periodicals grumbled that he would not bother to stock the novel, as it was “so decent it’s even fit


Should one’s servant read this?


Penguin for publishing ‘an obscene article’ begins at Old Bailey court no 1 and adjourns until 27 October so the jury can read the book. Day two The prosecuting


counsel asks the jury if members would like their wives or servants to be exposed to this


promiscuous tale. Witnesses for defence include the bishop of Woolwich, two female Oxbridge lecturers and three professors. (No literary figures appear for prosecution, whose only witness is a policeman who picked up copies from Penguin.) Day three. Witnesses include


EM Forster, future home secretary Roy Jenkins, a headmaster and a classics teacher. Day four. Witnesses include


the editor of The Guardian, future Conservative minister Norman St John-Stevas and future poet laureate Cecil Day-Lewis. Day five Closing speeches for


defence and prosecution are given. Day six. The jury retires for


three hours. Declares Penguin not guilty. April 1961. Penguin shares are oversubscribed 150 times.


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