Original subtitles

"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?

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 Don't know, 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 them all on an adding machine. It's all pointless.

They will replace us all with machines.

I can't wait. What'll you do then?

Don't know.

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.

Really? It´s here, 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 Don't know.

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 Don't know. 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.

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 don't know.

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.

Do 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 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 to grammar school,

and then went on to university where I took an English degree.