Duncan Harley

The media today reported on the export ban placed on the original annotated High-Court copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Seemingly, if anyone in the land has a deep-enough wallet, then the actual copy used on the bench during the landmark 1960 obscenity trial can be had for a measly £56,250 or thereabouts. For those not in the know, the novel was penned just prior to D.H. Lawrence’s death in 1930 – well I suppose that would be a given really. Eventually published by Penguin some 30 years later the lusty tome became an underground sensation as both inquisitive schoolboys and curious adults swapped secret dog-eared copies in the hope of finding out what the lady did with the gamekeeper in the bushes behind the big house. A Crown Prosecution followed under the Obscene Publications Act and sales rocketed when the case was decided by a jury who took just a few hours to decide that the content did not deprave or corrupt anyone in the land. A permissive 1960’s society had seemingly t...

In the aftermath of the 1914-18 conflict, large swathes of Europe lay in ruins and the detritus of war littered the fields of France and Belgium. There was no longer much demand for tin helmets or barbed wire but battlefield tourism became popular just as it had after Waterloo and Culloden. Early visitors to the likes of Waterloo and Culloden were of course after second hand memories - photography had not yet been invented but battlefield tourists included Lord Byron, Sir Walter Scott and Victor Hugo who no doubt visited in hope of inspiration for their drawing or writing. Even Thomas Hardy got in in the act. In a more modern day, folk buy guided tours to the D-Day beaches and gloat upon Hitler's west-wall and those preserved Berlin ruins. I came across The Michelin Guide to Ypres  recently. It’s just one of a series published by the tyre company just a year after cessation of hostilities. A friend has an original copy dating from not long after the conflict. Published...