David Herbert Lawrence was born into a miner(1)s family in Nottinghamshire in 1885, the fourth of five children. After briefly working in both manufacturing and teaching, he published his first novel, The White Peacock, in 1911. He then published Sons and Lovers, but his next novel, The Rainbow, was suppressed for its alleged obscenity, and for three years he could not find a publisher for Women in Love. After the First World War he decided to escape the persecution he had suffered in England and spent many years travelling. His last novel, Lady Chatterley(1)s Lover, was published in 1928 but banned in Britain and America until 1960, when landmark trials cleared the way for publication of unexpurgated editions for the first time. Lawrence died in Vence, in the south of France, in 1930, at the age of forty-four.
Geoffrey Robertson QC has acted for the defence at many of the significant censorship trials since that over Lady Chatterley(1)s Lover, including those regarding Oz, Gay News, The Romans in Britain, Inside Linda Lovelace and The Satanic Verses, and has appeared at important free speech appeals in the Supreme Court, the European Court of Human Rights and many Commonwealth courts. He is author of Obscenity (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1979), Media Law (with A. Nicol; Penguin, 5th edn, 2007), Freedom, the Individual and the Law (Penguin, 1993), Crimes Against Humanity (Penguin, 3rd edn, 2006), and a memoir, The Justice Game (1998). He also contributed the introduction to the 1990 reissue of C. H. Rolph(1)s (ed.) The Trial of Lady Chatterley (Penguin Special, 1961). He is the founder and head of Doughty Street Chambers and a Master of the Middle Temple.
Steve Hare is a freelance journalist, author and lecturer, specializing in the visual arts and publishing history. He is the author of Penguin Portrait: Allen Lane and the Penguin Editors 19351970, celebrating Penguin(1)s 60th anniversary in 1995, as well as history of Penguin Classics, published in the Penguin Classics Catalogue 1996 celebrating the list(1)s 50th anniversary. He owns what is possibly the world(1)s largest private collection of Penguins.
