I must confess I’m not a huge Lawrence fan. I’m familiar with the area in which he grew up and I read a couple of his novels orobably some forty years ago and haven’t engaged since, He’s always seemed rather enigmatic and on reflection, I hadn’t realised the extent of his other work including poetry and art work along with countless essays.

Caroline Roope’s research appears meticulous and considered. Her source material is extensive and this feels like an authoritative and well informed exploration of his life and those who influenced him. He doesn’t always come out of it terribly well and to a large extent, the man remains something of a mystery, Conflicted and passionate, articulate and often angry, he saw inequality and injustice all around and used words to express his feelings. On the basis of reading this, I’m going to look out some of his work and see if it has more appeal later in life and with a better understanding of the man and his background. It’s very well written and should appeal to anyone who loves books and particularly Lawrence’s works.

Having grown up in a village close to Eastwood, the birthplace of D.H.Lawrence, I've heard so much local folklore and walked the paths he used to walk. I've also read a great deal of his published work and it fascinates me still now, almost a century later, how not so much the sexual content of his novels that is controversial, but the language he used, that still even now many readers challenge authors over the use of swear words and find the words he wrote crude. Our lives seem so much more advanced and different to what Lawrence would ever recognise and yet books are still banned, and words have the power to shock.
This is an honest and well accounted book about his life and death, and also incorporates the impact he had on others, particularly his cruelty to his childhood sweetheart, Jessie. It details well his enmeshment with his mother, the realities of life in a mining village and his true feelings on the futility of war.
Interesting, enlightening and well written.