Afrikaans
Akan
Albanian
Amharic
Armenian
Azerbaijani
Basque
Belarusian
Bemba
Bihari
Bosnian
Breton
Bulgarian
Cambodian
Catalan
Cebuano
Cherokee
Chichewa
Chinese (Simplified)
Chinese (Traditional)
Corsican
Czech
Danish
Dutch
Esperanto
Estonian
Ewe
Faroese
Filipino
French
Frisian
Ga
Galician
Georgian
German
Guarani
Gujarati
Haitian Creole
Hausa
Hawaiian
Hindi
Hmong
Hungarian
Icelandic
Igbo
Interlingua
Irish
Italian
Japanese
Javanese
Kannada
Kazakh
Kinyarwanda
Kirundi
Kongo
Korean
Krio (Sierra Leone)
Kurdish
Kurdish (Soranรฎ)
Kyrgyz
Laothian
Latin
Latvian
Lingala
Lithuanian
Lozi
Luganda
Luo
Luxembourgish
Macedonian
Malagasy
Malay
Malayalam
Maltese
Maori
Marathi
Mauritian Creole
Moldavian
Mongolian
Myanmar (Burmese)
Montenegrin
Nepali
Nigerian Pidgin
Northern Sotho
Norwegian
Norwegian (Nynorsk)
Occitan
Oriya
Oromo
Pashto
Persian
Polish
Portuguese (Brazil)
Portuguese (Portugal)
Punjabi
Quechua
Romanian
Romansh
Runyakitara
Russian
Samoan
Scots Gaelic
Serbian
Serbo-Croatian
Sesotho
Setswana
Seychellois Creole
Shona
Sindhi
Sinhalese
Slovak
Slovenian
Somali
Spanish (Latin American)
Sundanese
Swahili
Swedish
Tajik
Tamil
Tatar
Telugu
Thai
Tigrinya
Tonga
Tshiluba
Tumbuka
Turkish
Turkmen
Twi
Uighur
Ukrainian
Urdu
Uzbek
Welsh
Wolof
Xhosa
Yiddish
Yoruba
Zulu
This programme contains very strong language and some scenes of a sexual nature.
MUSIC: "C'mon Everybody" by Eddie Cochrane
Wonder what we'll get.
I'd like a nice juicy murder, lashings of blood.
Oh, don't say that.
I don't even like going in the butcher's.
D'you know how long a trial goes on? As long as it takes, I imagine.
No, but, I mean, do they have breaks, like if someone wanted the toilet?
Yes, I was wondering that.
The jury system has been going for 800 years, so I should think they would have thought of that by now.
I should cocoa! Oh, right.
Thank you.
Follow me, please.
Members of the jury, as your name is called, you will stand,
take the book in your right hand, and read the words on the card.
Raymond Charles Topping.
I swear by Almighty God...
..I will well and truly try the several issues joined...
Keith Ernest Gray.
..and a true verdict give according to the evidence.
'I don't mind telling you, I was terrified.'
I'd never been in a court before, or even been stopped by a policeman,
so when the summons came, I thought, "This is it, they got me now!"
'I was actually quite pleased to get the summons.'
I thought it might be quite a diversion, for while I was waiting for what happened next.
'My life was at a bit of a standstill, to be quite frank with you.'
Members of the jury, the prisoner at the Bar, Penguin Books Limited,
is charged with publishing an obscene article, to wit, a book entitled Lady Chatterley's Lover.
To this indictment it has pleaded not guilty and it is your charge
to say, having heard the evidence, whether it be guilty or not.
If Your Lordship pleases, I appear, with my learned friend Mr Morton, to prosecute in this case.
Members of the jury, it was learnt earlier this year that Penguin Books
proposed to publish this book, Lady Chatterley's Lover.
As a result of that, the company were seen by the police, and so it comes about
that you find yourselves in the jury box to give your judgement on Lady Chatterley's Lover.
I quote from the Obscene Publications Act of 1959.
"A book is to be deemed to be obscene if its effect, taken as a whole,
"is such as to tend to deprave and corrupt persons who are likely to read it."
So, does this book, might this book, deprave and corrupt anyone who might be likely to read it?
And my learned friend will doubtless argue that the book is not obscene, and that even if it were,
its literary merit would warrant its publication as being for the public good.
The prosecution will invite you to say that this book does tend
to introduce lustful thoughts in the minds of those who read it.
It goes further, you may think.
It sets upon a pedestal promiscuous and adulterous intercourse.
It commends, indeed, it even sets out to commend sensuality almost as a virtue.
It encourages, and indeed advocates coarseness and vulgarity of thought and language.
You may think that it must tend to deprave the minds, certainly of some, and you may think of many
of those persons who are likely to purchase it at the price of three shillings and sixpence.
You may think that one of the ways in which you can test the book
is to ask yourselves, once you have read it, this question -
would you approve of your young sons, your young daughters -
because girls can read as well as boys - reading this book?
Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or servants to read?
LAUGHTER
Well, let us turn now to the book itself.
I'd actually read the book years ago, well, glanced through it.
Ray, my first husband, had picked a copy up in Paris.
To tell the truth, I wasn't really interested then,
not that interested in other people's sex lives.
I was too involved in our own,
Ray's and mine. Then.
It is, if I may summarise, the story of Lady Chatterley,
a young woman whose husband is wounded in the First World War,
paralysed from the waist downwards so that he is unable to have any sexual intercourse.
It describes how this woman, deprived of sex from her husband, satisfies her sexual desires -
a sex-starved girl - how she satisfies that starvation
with a particularly sensual man who happens to be her husband's gamekeeper.
There are, I think, 13 episodes of sexual intercourse described in the greatest detail.
The curtains are never drawn.
One follows them not only into the bedroom but into bed.
But that is not strictly accurate, members of the jury,
because one starts in my lady's boudoir,
then one goes to the floor of a hut in the forest,
then we see them again in the forest, in the undergrowth, in the pouring rain,
both of them stark naked and dripping with raindrops.
Then in the keeper's cottage, first in the evening on the hearthrug, then in the morning in bed.
And then we move to Bloomsbury and we have it all over again
in the attic of a Bloomsbury boarding house!
When you read these passages you may well think that sex is dragged in
at every conceivable opportunity and you may think that the story is little more than padding.
Hmm. Now we come to the language.
The book abounds in bawdy conversation.
These matters are not normally voiced in this court,
but when it forms the whole subject matter of the prosecution, then we cannot avoid voicing them.
The word fuck or fucking occurs no less than 30 times.
Cunt...14 times.
Balls...13 times.
Shit and arse, six times apiece.
Cock, four times.
Piss, three times. And...so on.
Lady Chatterley and the gamekeeper are, you may think, little more than bodies,
bodies which continuously have sexual intercourse with each other.
You will see, for example, on page seven...
My Lord, I object! The Act says the book must be judged as a whole.
To consider particular passages without having read the whole book would be to prejudge the issue.
It was not my intention to prejudice or inflame the jury's minds before they read the book.
No-one is suggesting that, Mr Griffith-Jones.
But the book is charged as a whole, and perhaps the better course is for the jury to read the book first,
before hearing evidence about the whole book or any particular passages in it.
As Your Lordship pleases.
Well, the question now, then, is the reading of the book, is it not?
How shall that be done?
Perhaps the jury should take the book home, my Lord?
I think not.
I think they should read it here.
I am sorry, members of the jury, I don't want to condemn you to any kind of discomfort,
but if you were to take the book home, there might be distractions.
You should read the book through in the jury room, taking as much time as you need.
I suppose it might take a day or two.
Then we will all come back here and proceed with the case.
All rise!
Help yourselves to copies and make yourselves comfortable.
The lunch break will be at 12.30.
This is a bit of all right. Beats working, eh?
There's to be no discussion until after you've completed your reading.
"Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.
"The cataclysm has happened..."
"This was Constance Chatterley's position.
"The war had brought the roof down over her head.
"She had married Clifford Chatterley when he was home on leave.
"They had a month's honeymoon, then he went back to Flanders
"to be shipped over to England again, six months later, more or less in bits..."
"He was not really downcast.
"He had a bath-chair with a small motor attachment..."
"I'm sorry we can't have a son, she said..."
"It would be almost a good thing if you had a child by another man..."
"This is the new gamekeeper, Mellors..."
"The keeper's cottage looked uninhabited, it was so silent and alone.
"She went round the side of the house, turned the corner and stopped.
"In the little yard, two paces beyond her, the man was washing himself, utterly unaware.
"He was naked to the hips, his velveteen breeches slipping down over his slender loins..."
I didn't know where to look, when he was saying those words.
Some people thought it was funny. I did laugh, I couldn't help it.
It was just, I dunno, I'd never heard anyone say words like that in a posh voice.
It was the absurdity of it. Yeah. Exactly. The place for words like that is the gutter, not in court.
I don't see why he felt he had to say them out loud, we all know what they all are, after all.
I call it rank bad taste.
I suppose he felt he was doing his duty, like.
I think he was enjoying himself no end. Like a little boy saying, "Pee-po belly bum drawers"!
So what do we all think of the book so far?
We're not supposed to discuss it until we've finished it.
Come on, of course they know we're going to talk about it.
Well, she certainly puts herself about a bit, don't she? Lady C.
Two Germans, that Michaels bloke, and we haven't even got to the gamekeeper yet.
Is that what the aristocracy's like? In my experience, yes.
I suppose they've got the leisure time for it. Exactly.
What do you think of it?
I'm rather enjoying it, so far.
Although he does make an awful song and dance about it.
It's only sex, after all, isn't it?
"One evening she escaped after tea.
"It was late, and she fled across the park like one who fears to be called back.
" 'I'd love to see the chicks!' she said, panting, glancing shyly at the keeper, almost unaware of him."
"The man standing above her laughed, and crouched down,
"and put his hand with quiet confidence slowly into the coop.
"And slowly, softly, with sure, gentle fingers,
"he felt among the bird's feathers and drew out a faintly-peeping chick in his closed hand..."
"She took the drab little thing between her hands,
"and there it stood, on its impossible little stalks of legs,
"its atom of life trembling through its almost weightless feet into Connie's hands..."
"Suddenly he saw a tear fall on her wrist.
"Her face was averted, and she was crying blindly.
"His heart melted suddenly, and he put out his hand and laid his fingers on her knee.
" 'You shouldn't cry,' he said softly.
"He laid his hand on her shoulder, and softly, gently, it began to travel down the curve of her back,
"blindly, with a blind stroking motion, to the curve of her loins,
"and there his hand, softly, softly, stroked the curve of her flank,
"in the blind instinctive caress."
Funny old way to spend a day. Yeah, I'll say.
Better than work, though.
I'm Helena, by the way. Keith.
Pleased to meet you, Keith.
So, what's the work you're not doing today? Invoice clerk.
For a wholesale grocers.
Don't you like it? I hate it.
Same thing over and over again - adding up, adding up, adding up,
then the supervisor checks 'em all on an adding machine. It's all pointless.
They'll replace us all with machines.
I can't wait. What'll you do then?
Dunno.
Maybe I'll retrain as a gamekeeper!
Well, it does sound like rather a good job.
Are you married, Keith?
I am, as it happens, yeah. Are you?
Yes and no. In the process of divorcing, just waiting for my papers to come through.
Oh, right. My life's in a sort of limbo at the moment.
No proper home. I'm living in a little flat over a shop, just round the corner actually. Oh, yeah?
I, er, I turn off here.
Are you in a hurry, Keith?
No, not especially. There's something I'd like to show you...something I saw this morning.
It's just down here.
All right, then.
Look. Chicks.
Open your hands.
Don't you like it? I dunno.
I don't wanna hurt it. You won't hurt it.
There.
Look, what is this?
You know what it is. Look, I'd better get going.
I thought we might have a cup of tea. You haven't got time?
No, I think I'd...you know,
better get going. OK, then.
See you in court tomorrow. Yeah.
See you tomorrow.
So what was it like, then?
It was all right. Did you get your dinner? Yeah.
What was it like? It was all right. Not bad.
So did you get on a case? Yeah. Was it a murder?
No, nothing like that.
What, then?
We're not supposed to discuss it. Come on, you can tell me.
It's about a book. Lady Chatterley's Lover.
We've got to read it and decide if it should be banned.
That's supposed to be the most disgusting book out!
And you're reading it! Yeah.
The judge won't let the case start till we've read it.
So I've been hard at work all day, you've been reading a dirty book!
Yeah, that's right.
What's it like?
It's all right.
I like it, as it happens. Dirty bugger.
What?
What's the matter? I dunno. Nothing.
You know what it is.
"He held her fast and she felt his urgency...
"She saw his eyes, tense and brilliant, fierce, not loving...
"But her will had left her...
"For a moment he was still inside her, turgid there and quivering.
"Then as he began to move, in the sudden, helpless orgasm,
"there awoke in her new strange thrills rippling inside her.
"Rippling, rippling, rippling,
"like a flapping overlapping of soft flames, soft as feathers,
"running to points of brilliance, exquisite, exquisite,
"and melting her all molten inside...
"And as it subsided, he subsided too and lay utterly still, unknowing,
"while her grip on him slowly relaxed, and she lay inert.
"And they lay, and knew nothing, not even of each other, both lost.
" 'It's good when it's like that,' he said.
" 'Most folks live their whole life through and they never know it.' "
I thought I'd missed you.
Well, now you've caught me.
We could have that cup of tea today if you wanted to.
Sure you're not wanted at home?
No, Sylvia doesn't get home from work till half-past-six.
OK, then.
Now what?
'Members of the jury,'
you have heard from my learned friend the nature of the case for the prosecution.
He has told you in general terms what the book is about,
he has told you that it is full of repeated descriptions of sexual intercourse, and so it is.
He has told you it contains many four-letter words, and so it does.
Sorry, too many things.
You may be asking yourselves, why should any publisher want to publish such a book?
Well, Allen Lane, Sir Allen Lane as he is now,
founded Penguin Books
so that ordinary people could buy all the great books in our literature
at a reasonable cost.
The whole of Shakespeare,
the whole of Shaw, and now the whole of Lawrence.
Few people will disagree that Lawrence is one of the greatest writers of this century,
and Lady Chatterley's Lover is an essential novel
if we are to properly understand what Lawrence had to say,
and to properly understand Lady Chatterley's Lover,
we must be able to read it...
unexpurgated - to read the book Lawrence actually wrote.
It is a book about England,
about our society.
Lawrence wanted to say something about our society in this book.
He thought the ills in our society would not be cured by political action,
that the remedy lay in the restoration of right relations between human beings,
particularly in the union,
the physical union,
between man and woman.
Are you all right, Keith?
Not regretting it, I hope? No.
I'm just...
I've never done anything like this before.
Oh, dear.
Have I corrupted you? No.
I didn't mean that.
I thought about doing it with you,
yesterday and today. Did you?
Of course I did. Couldn't you tell?
I thought it was just me. Oh, no.
I've never met anyone like you before.
You don't know me yet, Keith.
Yeah, I do.
In one way, I do.
Yes.
Yes, you do.
Could I see you?
All of you?
Yes, of course.
You could have before, it was just we seemed to be in rather a hurry.
Help me.
Now I feel shy.
Now you.
You're beautiful.
DOOR SLAMS
Keith? In here!
What you doing in there with the door locked? Nothing.
Just having a wash. Having a wash? What's that all about?
Just felt like it. It's stuffy in that jury room.
Stuffy, sweaty. Everyone smoking.
And reading that dirty book. You feel dirty.
You've got very particular. I've always been particular.
I'm not complaining. Kiss?
# Old Keith Gray, he's a funny 'un Got a face like a pickled onion
# Got a nose like a squashed tomato and legs like matchsticks! #
Oi!
You do smell lovely and clean.
I'm doing your favourite tonight. Yeah?
'I call Sir Allen Lane.'
Sir Allen, when you founded Penguin Books, what was the idea you had in mind?
My idea was to produce a book which would sell for the price of ten cigarettes,
For people like myself, who left school at 16 or earlier,
my idea was it would be another form of education.
And what about this particular book?
We wanted to round off our DH Lawrence collection.
Very important writer, very important book.
I felt it had to be done.
Did you consider publishing an expurgated version?
No. All our books are published as the author wrote them.
I wouldn't consider doing it any other way. Thank you, Sir Allen.
Sir Allen, I have read a newspaper report, in the Manchester Guardian,
in which you expressed an opinion that Lady Chatterley's Lover is no great novel.
Was that your view?
No, it was not. As I said, I think it is a very important novel.
And you don't recall ever expressing any other view?
No, I do not.
I do remember saying I might go to prison for publishing it,
and I am prepared to go to prison if the case goes against us,
because I am sure it is quite right to publish it.
No further questions.
My Lord, I want to make clear that calling witnesses
to the literary merit of this book is not in any sense an admission that the book is obscene.
That is understood.
I call Mr Graham Hough.
You are lecturer in English and Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge?
And you are the author of The Dark Sun, a study of DH Lawrence?
That's right. Will you tell us something of Lawrence's place in English literature?
He's the most important novelist of this century and one of the greatest novelists of any century.
I don't think that's disputed. And where would you place this book?
I don't think it's the best of his novels, nor the least good, either.
It has been said by my learned friend that, "Sex is dragged in
"at every opportunity, and that the plot is little more than padding."
If that were true, would it be a serious criticism of the book?
If it were true, it would be, but in my view it's utterly false.
The sexual passages may be the heart of the book, but they only occupy some 30 pages in a book of 300.
The book is about much more than a series of sexual acts.
What about the four-letter words?
In Lawrence's view there is no proper language to speak of sexual matters. He is trying to redeem
the traditional words, now considered obscene, and to use them in an entirely serious context.
I don't think he is successful, but that's what Lawrence was trying to do. Thank you.
You have told us, Mr Hough, that this is not Lawrence's best book.
Do you know of the writer Katherine Anne Porter?
She's a distinguished American short-story writer.
Just so. This is what she wrote about Lady Chatterley's Lover.
"A dreary, sad performance, with some passages of unintentional hilarious low comedy,
"one scene at least simply beyond belief in a book written with such inflamed apostolic solemnity."
What do you think of that judgement? Obviously, I disagree with it.
She goes on to say, "This is the fevered daydream of a dying man,
"sitting under his umbrella pines in Italy, indulging his sexual fantasies."
Might this not be, in fact, the fevered daydream of a dying man?
Lawrence wasn't dying when he wrote this book. He died some two years later.
He was ill when he wrote the book.
Thank you.
Now, would you agree that a good book by a good writer,
generally speaking, should not repeat things again and again?
It's a tiresome habit, is it not?
Not necessarily. Repetition can be used to great literary and emotional effect.
There is a great deal of it in the Bible.
I am talking about this book at the moment. Have you a copy of it? Yes.
Could you look at page 177?
I will read it to you, if the court will forgive
my miserable attempt to pronounce the local dialect.
" 'Th'art good cunt, though, aren't ter?
" 'Best bit o' cunt left on earth. When ter likes! When tha'rt willin!'
" 'What is cunt?' she said.
" 'An' doesn't ter know? Cunt!' #
I need not go on reading. Just glance down the page.
Cunt appears, fuck appears, cunt appears, fuck appears, all in the space of about 12 lines.
Is that a realistic conversation, even between the gamekeeper and the baronet's wife?
Is this a good piece of writing?
I don't think it's successful, but I can see what he's trying to do.
I am not asking you what he is trying to do! Is it a good piece of writing?
Er, well, I think it's a failure.
You agree with me in this, that in this book of such high merit,
there is at least one passage of very low merit?
Yes... Thank you, Mr Hough.
Well, he made mincemeat out of him.
Mr Hough did seem to be on the defensive, rather.
He left him in tatters, no contest.
I think he should have stood up for that passage.
It's a playful sort of conversation,
between two lovers who know each other very well?
He's teasing her, making a thing about the class difference, and she's playing up to it.
When she says, "What is...?" You know - she's playing a game. Of course she knows what it is, really.
But a lady would never say that word. I think she might.
It's the middle classes that are prudish about four-letter words.
The aristocracy use them just as freely as the lower classes. There you are.
Well, I don't like having my nose rubbed in it.
What a curious thing to say.
It's only a book, after all.
Books can't harm you, can they?
I think that's what we're here to decide.
About this particular book, I mean.
Yes, I suppose we are.
Miss Gardner, you are Reader in Renaissance Literature at Oxford University.
What do you think of DH Lawrence?
He is one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.
You are not, I think, an admirer of this particular book?
I think it's a remarkable book.
I don't think it's a wholly successful novel,
although I think certain passages are amongst the greatest things that he ever wrote.
It has been said in court that the four-letter words form the whole subject matter for the prosecution,
and that the words fuck or fucking occur not less than 30 times.
Now, what, in your view, is the relation of the four-letter words in this book to its literary merit?
I don't think any words are disgusting or obscene in themselves.
It depends on the context, and I would say that by the end of the book Lawrence goes very far
to redeem this word and make one feel that it is the only word that the character could use.
By the time one gets to the last page, one feels that this word has taken on a great depth of meaning.
You said that certain passages are some of the greatest things that Lawrence wrote.
Which passages did you have in mind?
Some of the passages which describe the sexual act
and some of the passages in which the characters talk about sexual relations between men and women.
Including four-letter words?
Yes. I think Lawrence succeeds, far beyond expectation, in communicating an experience of great importance
and great value, which very few other writers have really attempted with such courage and devotion.
Thank you.
Mr Griffith-Jones?
No questions, Your Honour.
So...she liked the dirty bits best!
Miss Helen Gardner, eh? Wonder what she knows about it!
Must be more to her than meets the eye! Your friend Mr Griffith-Jones was rendered speechless.
Well, I'm not surprised, old bird like that sticking up for the dirty bits.
They're not dirty bits.
Oh, I beg your pardon. What would you call them, then?
I can't remember how she put it.
She said those passages communicate an experience of great importance,
and very few writers have even attempted it.
And what's the point of that?
We all know...what it's like.
What's the point in going on about it, except to get people feeling fruity. Excuse me.
I call 'em dirty bits cos that's what they are.
Sex doesn't have to be dirty. Oh, pardon me, Vicar!
That's the whole thing what he's on about in the book. I stand corrected!
D'you fancy a breath of fresh air?
All right.
Well.
Horrible man.
I liked it, when you told him off.
I didn't have the words to do it properly.
I felt like smacking him one on the nose.
I think people knew what you meant.
She was good, that woman.
Miss Helen Gardner. It was brave of her.
Of course people are going to say, "What does she know about it, an old spinster like that?"
Yeah. I thought that too.
I liked what you said.
Were you thinking about you and me? Yeah.
And them in the book.
The first time me and you talked, and you said, "It's only just sex, isn't it?"
I thought that sounded so sophisticated.
I was just trying to be smart.
Cos it's never only sex, though, is it? I mean,
it's not really something you can say "it's only" about.
There's always more to it than that.
It shakes you up.
Turns you inside out...sometimes.
Yes.
Mrs Bennett, you're a Fellow of Girton College,
you teach young people, you have children of your own.
What view do you think this book puts forward about marriage?
That it should be a complete relationship, including the physical.
And that one party in the marriage can go off and have affairs?
Lawrence believed that if it was a complete sham, then the marriage vows could be broken.
Oh, I see.
But in fact he shows the woman breaking her marriage vows without any compunction at all,
without even telling her husband.
And isn't that indeed what Lawrence himself did?
He ran off with his friend's wife, didn't he? Yes, he did, but...
And it's just this type of behaviour that's depicted in this book?
A woman is shown... A man running off with another man's wife!
The whole book is about that subject, is it not? Adultery!
Infidelity! Without a hint that there might be something wrong in the act of adultery.
Without a hint that there might be something dishonest, something cruel about infidelity.
If you put it like that... Thank you.
Mrs Bennett, it is clear from the book that the husband told her to go and have a child by another man.
Yes.
And I would like to add, respecting Lawrence's own conduct,
that his own marriage lasted the whole of his life.
What's the matter?
Nothing. I thought you liked rissoles.
I do like rissoles. I was just thinking.
Thinking what? Nah... No, go on.
I like to know what thoughts are going on in the great brain.
I haven't got a great brain.
Sometimes I think I haven't got a brain at all.
Well, that proves it, doesn't it, thinking that?
That's a deep thought.
I don't think thoughts like that. I just think thoughts like, "What are we going to have for supper?"
What were you thinking about? I was thinking...you know, DH Lawrence?
He ran off with his friend's wife.
I'm not surprised, what I've heard about him.
They got married, and they stayed married till he died.
I'm glad to hear it.
'Call the Bishop of Woolwich.'
Bishop, what, if any, would you say, are the moral or ethical values of this book?
Lawrence didn't have a Christian view of sex,
and the sexual relationship depicted in the book is not one that I would regard as ideal,
but what I think Lawrence is trying to do is to portray the sex act as something essentially sacred.
Archbishop William Temple once...
Just a moment, Bishop, I just want to get this right.
He was trying to portray the sex relation...?
As something essentially sacred. Yes, I thought that was it.
Go on. I was about to quote Archbishop William Temple.
He once said that Christians didn't make jokes about sex
for the same reason as they didn't make jokes about Holy Communion -
not that it is sordid, but because it is sacred.
And I think that is how Lawrence saw it.
I see.
It has been suggested that Lawrence places upon a pedestal promiscuous and adulterous intercourse.
That seems a distorted way of looking at it.
If the jury read the last two pages, for example, there is a most moving advocacy of chastity,
and I think the effect of the book as a whole is against, rather than for, promiscuity.
Bishop, are you asking the jury to accept that this book is a valuable work on ethics?
It doesn't set out to be a work on ethics, but it does have ethical values.
Is it, in your view, a book which Christians ought to read?
Yes, I think it is.
No further questions.
Well, I don't call him much of a bishop.
Never heard anything like it in my life.
The man's obviously some cranky fellow-travelling toady to the intelligentsia.
I don't know where they found him.
There must be at least two dozen bishops who wouldn't give that book house-room.
I don't mind telling you, I'm getting sick of it, this parade of know-alls who,
one after another tie themselves in knots trying to tell us that what is obviously a dirty book
is something every boy and girl should read.
What are you thinking?
I dunno.
I think maybe we should stop doing this.
You're not tired of me already?
No.
Christ, no.
But, you know - Sylvia. I don't want to hurt her.
You don't have to.
What she doesn't know can't hurt her, can it? Suppose not.
What's she like - Sylvia?
I've known her so long, it's hard for me to say.
She's pretty.
Year younger than me. We were going out together when she was 14 and I was 15. Childhood sweethearts.
Yeah, if you like.
D'you have good sex with her?
Yeah. You know, it's all right.
You don't have to answer me, it's none of my business.
Yeah...it's fine, but, you know,
I think we had our best moments a long time ago, maybe even before we did it properly.
It was so exciting, getting to know each other,
all that wrestling, getting to first base, second base, third base.
She made me struggle for it,
but it was like, I dunno, discovering hidden treasure, all bit by bit, each bit better than the last bit.
All that went on for months, years.
It sounds nice.
An old-fashioned courtship. Yeah.
Yeah, it was, I suppose.
Not like him and her in the book. Or you and me. No.
What about you? What was he like, your husband?
Ray? I suppose you'd have to call him a charming bastard.
He was married to someone else when I met him. Couldn't resist him.
He was very good at all that, very good at sex as well.
Not very good at paying the bills, not very good at telling the truth.
I had a lot of fun with him.
Actually, I adored him.
It took me years to realise he was a cold-hearted bastard
who didn't really give a damn about anyone but himself.
Thank God we never had a child.
Did he go with other women?
I should say so.
Mind you, I had affairs too.
He didn't mind, because he didn't care.
I pretended to be happy, even to myself, I think.
And then I stopped pretending.
So you're not happy?
Oh, I've got nothing to complain about.
I'm over him now. Much better off without him.
I don't even hate him any more.
Am I the first since you split up with him? No.
The best, though.
We're not going to stop this, are we? Not yet, anyway?
No.
I don't think I could.
Nor me.
Call Richard Hoggart.
Mr Hoggart, would you tell us a little about yourself?
I was born into the working class, in Leeds.
I went to the local elementary school, and won a scholarship togrammar school,
and then went on to university where I took an English degree.
A background rather like Lawrence's own, then.
Lawrence didn't go to university, he went to a teacher's training college.
And perhaps there's something particular about a Nottinghamshire mining village upbringing.
We're not all the same, us working class lads, you know. No, indeed.
And you are now a Senior Lecturer in English at Leicester University,
and you lecture on Lawrence to the young people under your care. Yes, I do.
This book, Lady Chatterley's Lover, has been described in Court
as little more than vicious indulgence in sex and sensuality.
Is that a valid description of the book?
Not at all. It is not vicious.
It is highly virtuous, and if anything puritanical.
Did you say...
virtuous and puritanical? Yes, sir.
I believe it's a very moral book.
In fact, you could say that the physical, sexual side is not that important to Lawrence.
I know that sounds paradoxical.
What Lawrence is interested in is a relationship which is, in the deepest sense, spiritual.
It's a kind of sacrament for him.
So what exactly do you mean by saying that this is a moral book?
I mean that the overwhelming impression I get, as a careful reader,
is of the enormous reverence which must be paid by one human being to another in a physical relationship.
These relationships are not matters in which we use each other like animals.
This spirit seems to me to pervade the book throughout,
and so I would call the book highly moral and not at all degrading of sex.
And the four-letter words have been referred to. What is your view on them?
They are part of the normal discourse of many people, and not only working class people.
They are used very freely indeed in everyday life.
50 yards from the court this morning I heard a man say "fuck" three times as he passed me.
He said, "Fuck it, fuck it, fuck it!" as he went past.
If you have worked on a building site, as I have, you will hear it over and over again.
The word is used in contempt, of course, as a term of abuse.
Lawrence wanted to re-establish its proper use. Which is?
As the word for the sexual act.
We have no word in English for it that isn't either a long abstraction,
or a euphemism, and we're constantly running away from it, or dissolving into dots, in a passage like this.
Lawrence wanted us to say, "This is what one does."
In a simple, ordinary way, one fucks - with no sniggering or dirt.
One fucks.
I wonder, Mr Hoggart, do you belong to that body of people who oppose all prosecutions for obscenity?
Not at all. But I do resent the fact that ordinary men and women should be prevented
from reading a serious book by a great writer who has something of importance to say.
I see.
Now, you described this book as "highly virtuous, if not puritanical".
That is your genuine and considered view, is it? Yes, it is.
Well, perhaps I've spent my whole life under a misapprehension of the meaning of the word "puritanical".
Can you enlighten me?
Yes. Many people live their lives under the same misapprehension.
This is the way that language decays.
Today, the word has been extended to mean someone who's against anything pleasurable, particularly sex.
Its true meaning is somebody who belongs to the tradition of British Puritanism,
and the defining feature of that is an intense sense of responsibility for one's conscience.
In this sense, the book is puritanical.
I am obliged to you for that lecture.
In fact, one could say... JUDGE MOANS
Mr Hoggart, I don't want to stop you if you have something further to say,
but the question I want to ask you is quite a simple one to answer without another lecture.
We are not at Leicester University at the moment.
Now I want to see more precisely what you describe as "puritanical".
Would you look at page 222 of the book?
Lady Chatterley is drying her hair in front of the fire, after one of their bouts,
when he took her, and I quote, "like an animal.
"He stroked her tail with his hand,
"long and subtly taking in the curves and the globefulness.
" 'Tha's got such a nice tail on thee.
" 'It's the nicest, nicest woman's arse as is.
" 'An' ivery bit of it is woman, woman, sure as nuts.
" 'Thart not one of them button arsed lasses as should be lads, are ter!
" 'Tha's got a real soft sloping bottom on thee, as a man loves in 'is guts.' "
Is that a passage you would describe as "puritanical"?
Yes, puritanical, and poignant, and tender.
"All the while he spoke he exquisitely stroked the rounded tail,
"till it seemed as if a slippery sort of fire came from it into his hand.
"And his fingertips touched the two secret openings to her body,
"time after time, with a soft little brush of fire." Is that puritanical?
Yes, indeed it is.
I see. " 'An' if tha shits an' if tha pisses, I'm glad.
" 'I don't want a woman as couldna shit nor piss.' " Is that puritanical? Yes, it is.
" 'Here tha shits and here tha pisses an' I lay my hand on 'em both and I like thee for it.
" 'I like thee for it. Tha's got a proper woman's arse, proud of itself.
" 'It's none ashamed of itself, this isna."
"He laid his hand close and firm over her secret places, in a kind of close greeting."
And that is puritanical, is it?
In my view, it is puritanical, and poignant, and tender.
Do you feel puritanical?
Not really. Tell you the truth, I didn't have the faintest idea what he was talking about, that man.
He was saying that sex is like a sacrament, or it was for Lawrence
and for Mellors and Lady Chatterley.
What's that got to do with Lawrence?
That Bishop said that Lawrence wasn't even a Christian.
I think he worshipped his penis. I think most men do, actually.
The stuff you come out with.
Well, it's true, isn't it? I don't worship my...penis.
No, but you follow it where it leads, don't you?
Is that what happened with me and you?
Isn't it?
Look, it's stirring, I think it overheard us.
John Thomas.
That chap was wrong, wasn't he?
Lawrence wasn't all for plain speaking, not altogether.
Mellors has a pet name for it - his penis is John Thomas and her vagina's Lady Jane.
When he's weaves flowers through her pubic hair, and she winds creeping Jenny round his penis.
Would you like me to do that for you?
If you like.
I think we should try out everything they try out, don't you? All right.
Not many forests round here, though.
We'll have to improvise.
Meanwhile...
D'you like this?
Yeah.
Sylvia won't do anything like this. She says it's dirty.
Poor Sylvia.
I'll have to write her a little note,
tell her what she's missing.
PANTING
I wish...
What?
It could be just you and me.
That's what he said in the book.
But the world's so full of other people.
Old Parker was in a right mood today. Was he?
Yeah. Taking it out on everyone.
Just because he's the boss, he thinks he can carry on like a two year old in a tantrum.
Nasty old bugger. Yeah. What can you do, though?
I tell you what I do.
I look at the clock, and I think, in two hours' time, or whatever it is,
I'll be home, with somebody who's so much nicer than you, you old bugger.
Well, look at you. I was only paying you a compliment!
Well, who'd have thought it? What?
You and I together in bed, like this.
And all thanks to DH Lawrence.
Actually, I've decided I'm not that keen on DH Lawrence or his gamekeeper.
Why's that, then? He's always telling her things, going on at her.
This is how life ought to be, this is what's wrong with women,
this is what I like and don't like.
And when they make love, it's always him in charge.
I thought that's what you all like. Well, you're wrong. Anyway, you're not like that.
I might be, given the chance.
I don't think so. And you've got a sense of humour.
When you really think about it, it's not a great book at all,
it's a lot of preaching and bullying and wishful thinking.
It got you going, though. Yes, I know, and I'm so ashamed.
Anyway, it wasn't the book that got me going,
it was you, with your bedroom eyes.
I'd never have thought those wicked thoughts about any of those other men.
What's so special about me?
Oh, now he's fishing for compliments!
But I'll tell you. It's your innocence. I'm not that innocent.
Yes, you are, you're innocent, like an animal.
There's no guile about you.
And from the first look, I could tell you really want it,
all of it.
I don't think most men do,
they just pretend they do,
or they really want something else -
power usually...
to get you where they want you.
So I'm different, am I?
Yes, you are.
You make me happy.
I call Mr Francis Cammaerts.
Call Mr John Connell.
Miss Sarah Beryl Jones.
Mr Norman St John Stevas.
I call Dr James Hemming.
Mr Francis Williams.
Call Anne Scott-James
Mr Raymond Williams.
Call Mr CK Young.
Call Mr Iain Foster.
Dr CV Wedgwood.
I call Sir Stanley Unwin.
Professor Kenneth Muir.
Mr Cecil Day-Lewis.
Call Miss Dilys Powell.
Mr Walter Allen.
Call Mr Roy Jenkins.
Mr Stephen Potter.
Call Miss Janet Adam-Smith.
Mr Noel Annan.
Mr Hector Hetherington.
Mr Hetherington, you are editor of the Manchester Guardian,
and a member of the Royal Commission on the Police.
Would you tell us what you would say is the theme or meaning of Lady Chatterley's Lover?
Well, the importance of the book to me
was as an exposition of the beauty and goodness of physical love at its best...
JUDGE GROANS
..of the redeeming power of sex, and the importance of tenderness.
Thank you.
No questions.
Mr Gardener, it is in my mind that the jury may be wondering how much longer this is going to go on.
How many more witnesses may we expect?
My Lord, I intend to call no witnesses.
Mr Gardiner? My Lord, I have another 36 witnesses waiting to testify to the merit of Lady Chatterley's Lover,
but in view of my learned friend's indication that there will be no witnesses for the prosecution,
I propose to call only one more witness.
Call Miss Bernadine Wall.
Miss Wall, you've just come down from Cambridge? That's right.
And you're writing a novel yourself, I gather.
Yes. And you have read Lady Chatterley's Lover?
Yes. I read it first in an expurgated edition, then more recently as Lawrence wrote it.
And what's your opinion of the unexpurgated version?
It was much better. It gave a positive contrast.
The love affair contrasted with the deadness of the industrial society he was describing.
It held out a hope that this was not all, that there was some way out of this drab, daily existence.
Thank you.
Now, as to the four-letter words in the book, had you known them before you read the book? Yes, of course.
From what sort of age? My Lord, what has this to do with the literary merit of the book?
Very little, I should think.
My Lord, I'll withdraw the question.
And while I am on my feet, my Lord,
might I ask whether anybody who has just come down from Cambridge can be tendered as a literary expert?
She has started to write a novel.
So she has, my Lord. I suppose we must all start somewhere.
Carry on, Mr Gardiner. From the point of view of literary merit,
how does this book compare with others you have read,
in its treatment of human relations, including sexual relations?
It treats that relationship with great dignity.
More so, I think, than any novel I have ever read.
Thank you, Miss Wall.
No questions.
Fuck. Fucking.
That was a lovely fuck.
I love your cock in my cunt.
Go on.
Now you say something.
I love the feel of your...
Go on.
Cunt round my cock. No, I don't like it.
I mean, I like it, but I don't like saying it out loud like that, it's like talking dirty.
And what's wrong with talking dirty?
I bet you don't normally use words like that.
Yes, you're right.
But I can with you.
Why's that? Because I'm a bit of rough?
You're not a bit of rough, Keith.
I think you're rather more respectable than me.
What I meant was...
..this is our own little world here,
we can say what we like. Yeah.
Suppose so.
I know it's not easy to say those words,
but it felt all right just then.
It felt truthful.
And I think DH Lawrence would have thoroughly approved of me.
And you must have liked it.
Tell you the truth...
..I was a bit shocked to hear that from a woman.
You were, weren't you?
You're so sweet.
What?
What's the matter?
I don't like being patronised, that's what's. I wasn't. Truly.
You don't think of me as equal, that's why it's all so easy for you. Well, if you're going to sulk...
I'm not sulking, I'm just saying what's true.
This is all a game for you. I'm just...an amusement to you,
and when jury service is over, that's it, off you'll go, never a backward look.
What was your plan? To dedicate the rest of your life to me?
You're the one who's married, after all.
Do you want to stop this now? Because you can if you like.
No. I don't want to stop. Then let me say what I was going to just now.
These times with you,
they've been the best times I've had since...
..I don't know when.
You make me happy.
I love...
I love making love with you.
Fucking.
Yes. Fucking.
Yeah, you're right.
That's what it is.
Why call it anything else?
Fucking.
Cock. Cunt.
You know what? You've got a wonderful cunt.
Well, I think it's probably quite an ordinary cunt,
but it's all for you. This week.
This week for certain,
after that, who knows?
I think we should make the most of it. Don't you?
She made me feel like...a God or something.
When we were in her little flat,
it felt like we had the whole world in there.
The funny thing was...
..it didn't make me go off Sylvia or nothing.
I felt so...
happy, strong...
..confident.
I thought,
"What's wrong with a man having two women?"
Well, we really do have a mixed jury tonight.
Let's have the first record.
MUSIC: "Blue Angel" by Roy Orbison
What you looking at? See anything you like?
Yeah. Want to do anything about it?
Yeah.
Don't mind if I do.
It's not nine o'clock yet.
I don't care. Neither do I, then.
Come on. Let's get this off. No, I'll be cold. No, you won't.
That's it.
That's nice, that is.
And this is nice.
And this is.
Hey, I don't like that. Shush. You will.
I promise. Let me.
No, leave off. Keith!
SOBBING
What's the matter?
What is it? Come on, Sylve. Turn round.
Don't touch me, you bastard! Come on, Sylve. What's the matter? You know what's the matter! What?
You've got another woman, haven't you? How could I have another woman?
I don't know, but you have, haven't you?
You've got another woman and you do that with her!
Oh, come on, Sylve, don't cry. Get off me! It's true, isn't it?
It's true!
Yes, it's true.
Oh, Christ. Look... I don't want to know anything about it!
I don't want to know anything about her!
You can go to her if you like!
Just leave me alone, that's all!
Members of the jury,
this case has lasted several days,
and you have listened to a great deal of evidence and argument with great patience and close attention.
You have heard a great number of witnesses testify to the merit of this book,
and not one of them
thought it liable to deprave or corrupt.
And what has the prosecution produced?
Not one single witness has been found
to come to court to say anything against Lawrence, or his book.
The prosecution has made a point of reminding you that this is a book published at three and sixpence,
and thus affordable to anybody.
There is a suggestion that it might be all right if it were published as an expensive limited edition,
not for the common man or woman.
My learned friend asks, "Is it a book you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?"
Now, I don't want to upset the prosecution by suggesting
that there are nowadays some people who don't have servants.
But isn't everybody, whether earning ยฃ10 a week, or ยฃ20 a week,
equally interested in the society in which we live...
..and equally involved in the problems of relationships,
including sexual relationships?
And shouldn't wives be allowed to read about these things, as well as their husbands?
And isn't it time
we rescued Lawrence's name
from the quite unfair reputation it has had,
and allow our people...
..his people -
to judge for themselves?
Members of the jury...
..I leave Lawrence's reputation,
and the reputation of Penguin Books...
..in your hands.
Members of the jury, as you will now know,
this case is one of immense importance, with huge and far-reaching consequences.
In a matter of such gravity, I do not propose to waste your time by answering debating points.
It is easy enough to poke fun at the prosecution, especially in a case of this kind,
but I am not going to refer to any such matters.
Now, my learned friend has examined a number of witnesses in support of the book.
Who have we had? Bishops, prebendaries, other clergymen,
school teachers, a fashion editor, even a young girl who has just started her first novel.
All under the guise of literary experts.
I know that you will not be browbeaten by evidence given by these people.
You will judge this as ordinary people,
your feet on the ground, reading this book and judging it according to your own moral standards.
And there must be standards, must there not?
There must be some restraint, or the floodgates will open.
"A book of moral purpose," one witness called it.
What moral purpose?
If your husband can't satisfy you, go and copulate with other men until you find someone who can.
Isn't that what a young person reading the book would take from it?
Remember that you, and you alone, are the sole judge of the facts in this case.
And in this context,
I would ask your forgiveness for referring you to a passage on page 246.
It is a passage that has not previously been referred to during this trial.
It is that passage which describes what is called "the night of sensual passion".
"It was a night of sensual passion, in which she was a little startled and almost unwilling.
"Though a little frightened, she let him have his way."
Not very easy, you know, to know what he is driving at in that passage.
"And the reckless, shameless sensuality
"shook her to her foundations, stripped her to the very last, and made a different woman of her.
"Burning out the shames, the deepest, oldest shames, in the most secret places.
"It cost her an effort to let him have his way and his will of her."
One wonders why, with all the experiences that had gone before.
"It took some getting at, the core of the physical jungle, the last and deepest recess of organic shame."
I don't know. Is this stuff having a good influence on the young reader?
Members of the jury, do you not think this book has a false conception
of what proper thought and conduct ought to be?
In a time when some proper conception is so badly needed?
I submit to you that there can be but one answer.
Members of the jury, we are approaching the end of this case,
to which you have listened with the greatest care and attention.
I propose that we adjourn until tomorrow, when I will sum up the evidence,
and you will retire to consider your verdict.
All rise!
Let off a bit early today, then!
Time off for good behaviour!
See you in the morning. Right-o.
Evening.
What's the matter?
See that? All right for some, eh?
Well, I was quite surprised at Griffith-Jones today.
"The night of sensual passion!"
I didn't get what he was on about.
Really? Didn't you? I didn't get it.
He was talking about buggery, Keith.
Was he?
That's what homos do, isn't it? Well, not just homos, actually.
Bloody hell.
You mean, you?
It was something Ray was rather keen on.
I didn't actually care for it very much.
Bloody hell.
Ain't it against the law?
What's wrong? Sylvia knows.
You told her? She just sort of knew. I couldn't deny it. I've never been any good at telling lies.
No.
What did you tell her about me? Nothing. She didn't want to know.
She's all upset.
That's why you nearly didn't come today. Yeah.
But you did come.
I couldn't help myself.
Well, since you are here...
You don't have to.
I want you to.
I want us to do everything they did.
I want to give you everything she gave him.
I want you to give me everything he gave her.
"She had to be a passive, consenting thing, like a slave, a physical slave.
"Yet the passion licked round her, consuming,
"and when the sensual flame of it pressed through her bowels and breast, she thought she was dying.
"She often wondered what Abelard meant, when he said that in their year of love,
"he and Heloise had passed through all the stages and refinements of passion.
"She felt, now, she had come to the real bed-rock of her nature,
"and was essentially shameless."
Stay with me.
Please?
In a bleak warehouse near London Airport,
tens of thousands of copies of Lady Chatterley's Lover are being packaged up and made ready for delivery.
It's in the hands of the jury.
Will they go on sale or be pulped?
Members of the jury, you are the sole judges of the facts.
As we all know, these days the world seems to be full of experts.
But our criminal law is based on the view that the jury takes of the facts,
and not the view that experts say you should take.
You've got to look at the book as one you yourselves might have bought for three shillings and sixpence,
and then you must ask yourselves the question, "Does it tend to deprave and corrupt?"
Now, you have been told that it is a moral tract,
and a book that Christians should read.
But what do you think?
What is the story?
A woman has sexual intercourse before she is married,
and then, after she is married, commits adultery with someone called Michaelis,
and then proceeds to have adulterous intercourse with her husband's gamekeeper.
And that is described, you may think,
in the most lurid way.
If you have any reasonable doubt whether it has been proved to your satisfaction
that the tendency of this book is to deprave and corrupt morals, of course you will acquit.
On the other hand, if you are satisfied that the book
does have a tendency to deprave and corrupt, of course you will not hesitate to say so.
Now, a vast number of witnesses have been called.
But you are not governed by the opinions they have expressed.
You are the judges of the matter.
You might think that some of them proceeded on the basis,
this is a book by Lawrence, therefore this is a good book.
You must make up your own minds about that.
So, if you'd be kind enough to retire and consider your verdict and tell me how you find.
All rise!
Well, who'd like to start us off?
Well, I'd say guilty. If that's not a dirty book, I don't know what is.
I mean, a laugh's a laugh, but I don't mind saying I found it quite shocking in parts.
And as to literary merit?
I don't think it's clever sticking in those four-letter words in.
My dad used to say swearing was the sign of an impoverished vocabulary.
I agree with him. I think it should be banned.
The judge seemed to think we should return a guilty verdict.
He also said we didn't have to follow his opinion.
True. It's interesting that the prosecution didn't call any expert witnesses.
They didn't need any. It's like the judge said.
I think it's rather more likely that they couldn't find any.
You think it should be banned.
Do you really think it might deprave or corrupt anybody?
That's not the point. It should be banned on grounds of public decency.
It's exactly as the prosecution put it.
Publish this and you've opened the floodgates, you've opened the way for any kind of filthy rubbish.
We'll be poisoning the minds of our own children, and generations to follow.
Is this what we want the 1960s to be?
Is this what we fought two world wars for, the freedom to publish dirty books?
But this isn't a dirty book!
There's nothing dirty about sex.
It's natural, isn't it?
And I don't like the idea of anyone telling me what I'm allowed to read and not allowed to read.
And I don't want to be the one to tell anyone else, except my own kids,
and they're grown up now anyway, and they can choose for themselves. Cos that's what we're here for, isn't it,
to say if other people can read it?
Well, it hasn't done any of us any harm, has it?
I wonder if it has.
Do any of us think that we have been depraved or corrupted by reading Lady Chatterley's Lover?
Well, who'd answer yes to a question like that?
That is the question we are asked to answer.
And perhaps the best way to answer it is to ask ourselves, have I been depraved or corrupted by this book?
We've been picked at random - 12 ordinary men and women.
If the book has a tendency to deprave and corrupt,
then it's likely, isn't it, that it would have had that effect on us,
or at least some of us. So, has it?
Well, I don't know about anyone else, but I've been a bit...you know...shook up by it.
Reading this book, I feel like I might be missing out on things, you know...sex and that.
I don't mean to say I've never had it or anything,
but not like in the book.
And it sort of makes you think,
"Maybe I should," sort of thing, but I don't suppose I ever shall.
Is that depraved and corrupted? I wouldn't have thought so. Wouldn't you?
I think our friend here has put his finger on something. What it is is this,
the man who wrote this book is saying sex is everything,
and any kind of behaviour is justified in the search for sex, sex, and more sex!
He's saying it's perfectly fine for women to behave like whores before marriage and in marriage,
it's perfectly fine to hold your marriage vows with contempt, all for the sake of sex.
He's telling us that we should indulge and satisfy our appetites like farmyard animals!
If that's not depraving and corrupting, I don't know what is!
All he's doing is asking us to think about our lives.
And what result has that had in your case, may I ask?
Or perhaps I don't need to ask.
I wouldn't say I'd been depraved or corrupted by Lady Chatterley's Lover,
but I would say I've been affected by it.
But that's not a bad thing, that's a good thing, isn't it?
He's challenging us to look at our lives.
He's saying that some things are so...
special,
they're worth sacrificing anything for.
And sex...really good sex... is such a strong thing,
it just smashes up your whole life and puts it together in a different way.
If you find that passion and tenderness with someone...
..you have to follow it.
That's what he's saying.
But you can't just live your whole life like that.
Maybe Lawrence could, but we can't.
I mean, you'd just burn yourself up...
..wouldn't you?
Wouldn't it be worth it?
They're coming back.
Members of the jury, are you agreed upon your verdict? We are.
Do you find that Penguin Books are guilty or not guilty of publishing an obscene article?
Not guilty.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Silence in court!
Silence in court!
Silence in court!
I still don't know whether we done the right thing.
Not the verdict - I mean, me and Helena.
It was thinking about Sylvia and the baby coming, that and thinking,
"Well, like Helena said - sex isn't everything."
Maybe I was wrong.
But in a funny sort of way,
I think it was good for us, me and Sylvia, I mean.
Not at first, of course.
A bit rough at first,
but we stayed together.
It seems funny now,
all that passion.
All such a long time ago.
Yes, I married again, to a very nice man indeed.
He died three years ago. We were very happy.
I was very lucky.
But the most intense, the most important experience of my life, I'd have to say,
But the most intense, the most important experience of my life, I'd have to say,
was that week of sex, that week of love I had with Keith.
My Chatterley affair.
The time now is five minutes to 12, to zero hour, because here in this bookshop in the heart of London,
Lady Chatterley goes on sale at 12 noon sharp.
So let's wait and see how the rush develops and see what happens.
One copy only.
Thank you.
Two, please. One only. Only one.
Why are you buying a copy? Just to see what it's about.
Why do you want a copy?
We've heard so much about it, I just want to have a look. How about you?
I shall be doing a course on the modern novel at university.
Why do you want a copy of Lady Chatterley?
How about you? Just to find out what it's all about.
Why do you want a copy? I'm buying it for somebody else.
You're buying it for somebody else?
Why do you want a copy? For my wife. For your wife?
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
Can't find what you're looking for?
Get subtitles in any language from opensubtitles.com, and translate them here.