Episode Details

D.H. Lawrence wrote novels so frank about sexuality that they were banned, burned, and prosecuted for obscenity. The 1960 trial over Lady Chatterley's Lover became a landmark case for free expression. But reducing Lawrence to scandal misses the point — he was one of the most powerful prose stylists of the twentieth century.

This episode traces Lawrence from a Nottinghamshire mining town through his elopement with a German professor's wife, his restless exile across three continents, and the tuberculosis that killed him at forty-four.

• Lady Chatterley's Lover was banned in the UK until a landmark obscenity trial in 1960
• He eloped with Frieda von Richthofen, the wife of his former professor
• He lived in Italy, Australia, Mexico, and New Mexico, never settling anywhere for long
• His paintings were seized by police from a London gallery in 1929 for indecency