0:00:04 > 0:00:07DH Lawrence is one of the outstanding
0:00:07 > 0:00:10and most prolific English writers of the 20th century -
0:00:10 > 0:00:13author of novels like Sons And Lovers, The Rainbow,
0:00:13 > 0:00:18and most famously Lady Chatterley's Lover, as well as a large
0:00:18 > 0:00:22collection of short stories, poetry, plays and essays.
0:00:23 > 0:00:27But Lawrence is a writer with a bad reputation,
0:00:27 > 0:00:31first and foremost because he dared to write about sex.
0:00:32 > 0:00:37When he died in 1930, Lawrence was viewed by many as little more
0:00:37 > 0:00:39than a pornographer.
0:00:39 > 0:00:43On top of this, he has often been slurred as a woman hater,
0:00:43 > 0:00:46as a racist, condemned as unpatriotic,
0:00:46 > 0:00:50and scoffed at for lacking a sense of humour and for committing
0:00:50 > 0:00:54every crime against the conventions of good writing.
0:00:56 > 0:00:58Lawrence didn't help himself.
0:00:58 > 0:01:02His ferocious temper along with an unflinching appetite for speaking
0:01:02 > 0:01:07his mind combined to make him plenty of enemies especially in England,
0:01:07 > 0:01:09which he cursed for its snobbery
0:01:09 > 0:01:14and repression and which he declared, "Nauseates my spirit and my body."
0:01:20 > 0:01:25Lawrence's bad reputation, the snobbery, accusations and prejudice
0:01:25 > 0:01:27drove him into exile
0:01:27 > 0:01:31and out on a journey in pursuit of intellectual and personal freedom...
0:01:32 > 0:01:37..a journey that reveals Lawrence to be so much bigger, more engaging,
0:01:37 > 0:01:41and more interesting than the stereotypes would have you believe.
0:01:41 > 0:01:45There isn't an essence of Lawrence and that's his essence.
0:01:45 > 0:01:48There is so much of it. There are so many Lawrences.
0:01:48 > 0:01:50He wrote in every genre. Who else did that?
0:01:50 > 0:01:53The whole bent of Lawrence is towards freedom. That is
0:01:53 > 0:01:56what his writing is. It is free.
0:01:56 > 0:02:01It's like watching somebody doing open-heart surgery on themselves.
0:02:01 > 0:02:06You don't know where to look on occasions.
0:02:06 > 0:02:10He is willing to struggle with confusion in broad daylight.
0:02:10 > 0:02:14We always need mentors to do that for us.
0:02:16 > 0:02:18Lawrence wrote his way around the globe,
0:02:18 > 0:02:22from the Mediterranean to Ceylon, and on to Australia,
0:02:22 > 0:02:25ending up in the mountains of New Mexico,
0:02:25 > 0:02:28where, for a brief period, he found a kind of home.
0:02:28 > 0:02:33But his travels started with a journey across the Alps, an expedition
0:02:33 > 0:02:37that enabled him to complete his first great novel, Sons And Lovers.
0:02:37 > 0:02:41It's 100 years since Lawrence's working-class coming-of-age
0:02:41 > 0:02:44novel was published, blasting a hole
0:02:44 > 0:02:48in traditional fiction with its intensity and freshness.
0:02:48 > 0:02:52This is a film about the journey that brought that book to
0:02:52 > 0:02:55fruition, a soul-changing
0:02:55 > 0:02:59and spectacular mountain hike that reveals how the stereotypes
0:02:59 > 0:03:04of this writer bear only a passing resemblance to the real DH Lawrence.
0:03:17 > 0:03:21It was a journey that began on the well-to-do
0:03:21 > 0:03:24leafy streets of the Nottingham suburb
0:03:24 > 0:03:29of Mapperley as the 26-year-old David Herbert Lawrence made his way
0:03:29 > 0:03:33to a luncheon one Sunday in March 1912.
0:03:35 > 0:03:39It was an appointment that would unexpectedly and dramatically
0:03:39 > 0:03:40transform his life.
0:03:43 > 0:03:45Lawrence, who was then a schoolteacher,
0:03:45 > 0:03:50was visiting his old university lecturer, Professor Ernest Weekley,
0:03:50 > 0:03:53but when he arrived at the house, it wasn't
0:03:53 > 0:03:56the professor who greeted him at the door,
0:03:56 > 0:04:01but the professor's German wife Frieda.
0:04:01 > 0:04:04'She is not an intellectual but she knows her way around.'
0:04:04 > 0:04:06They talk about Oedipus before lunch.
0:04:06 > 0:04:09You don't often do this with Nottingham housewives.
0:04:09 > 0:04:12You really don't. And she's fascinated.
0:04:12 > 0:04:15He's a writer as well. That's interesting.
0:04:15 > 0:04:17"Tell me more about your writing."
0:04:17 > 0:04:20'They develop a rapport immediately.
0:04:20 > 0:04:24'Lawrence finds her absolutely staggering.
0:04:26 > 0:04:29'He has fallen for her like a ton of bricks.'
0:04:31 > 0:04:36Ernest Weekley was perhaps half an hour late for lunch -
0:04:36 > 0:04:39a minor error in timekeeping that brought about the end of his
0:04:39 > 0:04:43marriage and the beginning of one of the great literary love affairs.
0:04:45 > 0:04:49Only two months after their encounter in Nottingham,
0:04:49 > 0:04:52Lawrence and Frieda travelled to Germany together
0:04:52 > 0:04:59and on 25th May 1912 they arrived here in the small Bavarian village of Beuerberg.
0:04:59 > 0:05:04- You don't like Women In Love?- I was reading it a bit last night.
0:05:04 > 0:05:07Writer Geoff Dyer, author of a book about his own passion
0:05:07 > 0:05:09and pursuit of Lawrence,
0:05:09 > 0:05:13and academic Catherine Brown, who specialises in Lawrence's
0:05:13 > 0:05:16writing, have come here at the start of a hiking
0:05:16 > 0:05:19expedition following the journey over the Alps that Lawrence
0:05:19 > 0:05:22made with Frieda in the summer of 1912.
0:05:22 > 0:05:24It's beautiful.
0:05:24 > 0:05:27Although Lawrence had only known Frieda for a few weeks,
0:05:27 > 0:05:31he was already convinced that she was the woman of a lifetime.
0:05:31 > 0:05:35He called the week they spent here in Beuerberg a honeymoon.
0:05:35 > 0:05:38- You can imagine it - quite a place for a honeymoon.- Yes.
0:05:38 > 0:05:41This is where it began to look more like a honeymoon.
0:05:41 > 0:05:43This was the first place they had together.
0:05:43 > 0:05:45They had it for about a week.
0:05:45 > 0:05:49This was their first place where they could properly spend a whole
0:05:49 > 0:05:51week together. It was a revelation to them.
0:05:51 > 0:05:54I think that that's why Frieda, in her memoirs of Lawrence,
0:05:54 > 0:05:57actually starts the narrative at this point in Beuerberg.
0:05:57 > 0:06:03Yes, but as always with Lawrence it's a working honeymoon, isn't it?
0:06:03 > 0:06:04Yes, that's right.
0:06:04 > 0:06:07If you look at the collected Lawrence, you've got about two
0:06:07 > 0:06:11shelves' worth, and he died before his 45th birthday.
0:06:11 > 0:06:14You're thinking, "How did he write that much in that time?"
0:06:14 > 0:06:18The answer was that even when, for example, having a honeymoon,
0:06:18 > 0:06:20or quasi-eloping, he was writing,
0:06:20 > 0:06:22and Frieda notes this, that he
0:06:22 > 0:06:25would just put himself in a corner and the words poured out.
0:06:25 > 0:06:26Sure.
0:06:26 > 0:06:29Lawrence never dreaded writing. He could always do it.
0:06:29 > 0:06:33- So he's writing, keeping up with his correspondence.- That's right.
0:06:33 > 0:06:36If they have any kind of experience, he'll immediately sell
0:06:36 > 0:06:39- it into a sketch, a bit of journalism, that he hopes he can sell.- A poem.
0:06:39 > 0:06:41There'd be a poem.
0:06:41 > 0:06:45Then hanging over him is the big major project of revising
0:06:45 > 0:06:49the manuscript of Paul Morel which he'd brought with him, the manuscript
0:06:49 > 0:06:52which with subsequent revisions becomes Sons And Lovers.
0:06:53 > 0:06:55- You do have a brisk stride, don't you?- No.
0:06:55 > 0:06:59I was matching you. I thought you were just setting a different pace this time.
0:06:59 > 0:07:02Sons And Lovers, the novel
0:07:02 > 0:07:06in Lawrence's suitcase in Beuerberg tells the story
0:07:06 > 0:07:11of the family, childhood and coming of age of a young painter, Paul Morel.
0:07:12 > 0:07:15It's a book that closely mirrors Lawrence's own life
0:07:15 > 0:07:18and the story of how he became a writer.
0:07:21 > 0:07:23DH Lawrence was born into a coal-mining
0:07:23 > 0:07:28family in the Nottinghamshire town of Eastwood in 1885.
0:07:28 > 0:07:32Right from early childhood, Lawrence seems to have been marked
0:07:32 > 0:07:33out from the crowd.
0:07:33 > 0:07:40There's a photograph of Lawrence in his class at the Boys' School, Albert Street.
0:07:40 > 0:07:43Even in that picture he's a bit different from the others.
0:07:43 > 0:07:45He is the only boy of 72
0:07:45 > 0:07:47with a white handkerchief
0:07:47 > 0:07:49in his vest pocket.
0:07:49 > 0:07:52He is clearly well brushed and combed,
0:07:52 > 0:07:54all the other kids are.
0:07:54 > 0:07:57He's a special child, specially looked after.
0:07:57 > 0:08:00Looks a bit smaller than the others. People liked him a lot.
0:08:02 > 0:08:06The young Lawrence, just like his alter ego Paul Morel
0:08:06 > 0:08:10in Sons And Lovers, was shaped by his intense relationships with two women.
0:08:12 > 0:08:14His mother, people often say, "Oh, a schoolteacher."
0:08:14 > 0:08:17She wasn't a schoolteacher and she married Arthur Lawrence
0:08:17 > 0:08:19because she thought he had a rather important
0:08:19 > 0:08:22job in the coal mine - mining contractor.
0:08:22 > 0:08:25That just means being a miner. She thought it meant more.
0:08:25 > 0:08:29But from the start of the marriage she was trying to get her boys to
0:08:29 > 0:08:35be different and not be either like her, or her father, or like their father.
0:08:35 > 0:08:38She wanted them to be out in the world doing professional jobs
0:08:38 > 0:08:43and to hell with Eastwood mining, the grubbiness, the mining community.
0:08:45 > 0:08:49The other powerful influence was Lawrence's teenage girlfriend,
0:08:49 > 0:08:51Jessie Chambers.
0:08:51 > 0:08:55Jessie was the bookish younger daughter of a farming family.
0:08:55 > 0:08:58Her home, Haggs Farm, which sat a couple of miles
0:08:58 > 0:09:02away in the country below Eastwood was the place where Lawrence
0:09:02 > 0:09:07developed his passion and knowledge of the natural world.
0:09:07 > 0:09:11Jessie saw in Lawrence what she described as,
0:09:11 > 0:09:14"That radiant joy in being alive."
0:09:14 > 0:09:16She wanted him to be a writer,
0:09:16 > 0:09:20I'm not sure he did so much in the early days. Here was the idea of,
0:09:20 > 0:09:23"A great man, you can be a writer."
0:09:23 > 0:09:26Lawrence had this wonderful remark, "A collier's son a poet?"
0:09:26 > 0:09:28He really had a lot of irony about that,
0:09:28 > 0:09:31but Jessie believed in him.
0:09:31 > 0:09:35Jessie would have helped him see himself as a tragic hero.
0:09:41 > 0:09:45After finishing his studies in Nottingham in 1908 at the age
0:09:45 > 0:09:49of 22, Lawrence moved to the South London suburb of Croydon
0:09:49 > 0:09:52where he took up a job as an elementary school
0:09:52 > 0:09:54teacher at the Davidson Road School.
0:09:56 > 0:10:01His literary career began in 1910 when a London magazine called
0:10:01 > 0:10:04The English Review printed one of his short stories,
0:10:04 > 0:10:06Odour Of Chrysanthemums.
0:10:07 > 0:10:11Publication came about largely due to the great enthusiasm
0:10:11 > 0:10:14of the magazine's editor, Ford Madox Hueffer,
0:10:14 > 0:10:19who was struck by Lawrence's instinctive gift for storytelling
0:10:19 > 0:10:23and also his compelling insight into what, for his middle-class
0:10:23 > 0:10:27readership, was the unknown world of working-class life.
0:10:30 > 0:10:32The publication of the story introduced
0:10:32 > 0:10:36Lawrence into the fashionable circles of London literary
0:10:36 > 0:10:38society where this son of a collier,
0:10:38 > 0:10:42and his account of the intimate lives of ordinary working people,
0:10:42 > 0:10:46was treated with a mixture of curiosity and condescension
0:10:46 > 0:10:51by a cultural elite who smirked at his clothes, looks and manner.
0:10:52 > 0:10:56However, Hueffer was a sincere enthusiast for Lawrence's
0:10:56 > 0:10:59writing and helped him to get his first full-length novel,
0:10:59 > 0:11:02The White Peacock, into print,
0:11:02 > 0:11:06repeatedly declaring, "You've got genius!"
0:11:10 > 0:11:14Towards the end of 1910, encouraged by the first hints of literary
0:11:14 > 0:11:18success, Lawrence began work on a new book.
0:11:18 > 0:11:21It would be a novel set in the mining world that
0:11:21 > 0:11:24so appealed to his editor and publishers -
0:11:24 > 0:11:29a novel about his own family and his own life, Sons And Lovers.
0:11:32 > 0:11:34However the book did not come easily.
0:11:34 > 0:11:38Not only was this painful, emotional territory,
0:11:38 > 0:11:41but Lawrence was deeply frustrated by the demands that school life
0:11:41 > 0:11:44placed on his time and energy.
0:11:44 > 0:11:46It is hard to find the time to be the writer
0:11:46 > 0:11:49and to do all these things which the publishing world wants of him
0:11:49 > 0:11:54to do and to go on marking his essays at school and the heaps of 72
0:11:54 > 0:11:58copybooks to do by the end of the evening and all that.
0:11:58 > 0:12:01So, "What are you going to do with your life?" is the real problem
0:12:01 > 0:12:02and he still doesn't know.
0:12:04 > 0:12:07But the whole problem is resolved, oddly, by Lawrence getting
0:12:07 > 0:12:15fearfully ill in November, 1911. He gets double pneumonia, nearly dies
0:12:15 > 0:12:21and struggles back into life during December, January, February
0:12:21 > 0:12:25and doesn't want to go back to school teaching, and really feels that
0:12:25 > 0:12:28that strain of the life at school - he can't go back to that.
0:12:28 > 0:12:32If there's ever a moment come for a break, it's come.
0:12:35 > 0:12:39It was at this point that Lawrence went for lunch in Nottingham
0:12:39 > 0:12:41and met the extraordinary Frieda Weekley...
0:12:43 > 0:12:47..the woman who became both the central character in his life
0:12:47 > 0:12:49and, by extension, in his writing.
0:12:51 > 0:12:54Only two months later, they travelled to Germany together
0:12:54 > 0:12:56although to begin with, for Frieda,
0:12:56 > 0:12:58this was no more than a summer holiday.
0:12:59 > 0:13:03Frieda has every intention of going back,
0:13:03 > 0:13:05of course she does, she's got three children.
0:13:05 > 0:13:07If an affair happens with Lawrence, how very nice
0:13:07 > 0:13:09and the two of them go back home again
0:13:09 > 0:13:14after a sort of regenerative summer. That is not what Lawrence intends.
0:13:14 > 0:13:16Lawrence thinks this is the woman of a lifetime.
0:13:16 > 0:13:19That's his phrase for her, "She is the woman of a lifetime."
0:13:19 > 0:13:23And he tells her she's got to marry him, not go back.
0:13:23 > 0:13:27Will Frieda do that? She'd be crazy to do that.
0:13:30 > 0:13:34But by the time they reached the little village of Beuerberg,
0:13:34 > 0:13:39Frieda realised that Lawrence had become what she called "a deep necessity".
0:13:39 > 0:13:41The feeling was certainly mutual.
0:13:47 > 0:13:49After their week of honeymooning, Lawrence
0:13:49 > 0:13:53and Frieda continued the summer in Bavaria with Lawrence working
0:13:53 > 0:13:55hard on the third draft of Sons And Lovers.
0:13:57 > 0:14:00He submitted the manuscript to his publisher, Heinemann,
0:14:00 > 0:14:04but was horrified to receive a rejection letter.
0:14:04 > 0:14:07Although Lawrence quickly found a new publisher,
0:14:07 > 0:14:10thanks to his friend, the editor, Edward Garnett,
0:14:10 > 0:14:12he was keenly aware that after two and a half years
0:14:12 > 0:14:16labouring on the book, he desperately needed to complete it,
0:14:16 > 0:14:19not least out of financial necessity.
0:14:23 > 0:14:27Six months after meeting Lawrence, in August, 1912,
0:14:27 > 0:14:31Frieda agreed that instead of going back home to her husband
0:14:31 > 0:14:33and children in England,
0:14:33 > 0:14:36she would accompany him to Italy where they hoped to find a place
0:14:36 > 0:14:40where they could live cheaply while he settled down to his writing.
0:14:42 > 0:14:45The spectacular journey Lawrence and Frieda undertook over the Alps
0:14:45 > 0:14:49and the following months they spent in northern Italy were life-changing
0:14:49 > 0:14:54for Lawrence, providing him with an extraordinary creative stimulus.
0:14:56 > 0:14:59Not only was he working on another draft of Sons And Lovers,
0:14:59 > 0:15:03but he would also produce a wealth of new writing,
0:15:03 > 0:15:07including ground-breaking poetry, the first of his incomparable
0:15:07 > 0:15:14travel sketches, a sequence of essays, two plays, as well as
0:15:14 > 0:15:18the beginning of both a comic novel and his masterpiece, The Rainbow.
0:15:20 > 0:15:22It would be a journey on which Lawrence
0:15:22 > 0:15:24came into his own as an artist.
0:15:28 > 0:15:32Lawrence and Frieda decided to begin the journey to Italy on foot
0:15:32 > 0:15:35and from Lawrence's various accounts, it is abundantly
0:15:35 > 0:15:39clear they were hopelessly ill-prepared for the trip.
0:15:39 > 0:15:41Where are we going now, Catherine?
0:15:41 > 0:15:44- You getting stung? - No, just bitten a bit.
0:15:44 > 0:15:47Where are we meant to be heading, up here?
0:15:47 > 0:15:49I'm not sure, and nor did they know.
0:15:49 > 0:15:52- Do you think they had maps with them?- Surely they'd have had a map.
0:15:53 > 0:15:57At some point on the route, they took the wrong turning
0:15:57 > 0:16:01and by the time that the light began to fade, they were clearly lost.
0:16:01 > 0:16:04- Oh, here we are.- Look at that.
0:16:04 > 0:16:07And then they stumbled across a small mountain chapel.
0:16:07 > 0:16:10It is very well kept up.
0:16:10 > 0:16:13It is certainly like the kind of place they...
0:16:13 > 0:16:17- It is clearly a functioning Catholic chapel stop. Shall we go in?- Yeah.
0:16:20 > 0:16:23"There was a click of the latch in the cold, watchful
0:16:23 > 0:16:27"silence of the upper mountains, and we entered.
0:16:27 > 0:16:30"By the grey darkness coming in from outside,
0:16:30 > 0:16:34"we made out the tiny chapel, candles on the altar
0:16:34 > 0:16:38"and a whole covering of ex-voto pictures on the wall."
0:16:41 > 0:16:45Throughout this Alpine journey, Lawrence wrote essays and sketches,
0:16:45 > 0:16:49some of which reveal an often overlooked aspect of his writing -
0:16:49 > 0:16:53his deep fascination and preoccupation with religion
0:16:53 > 0:16:55and spirituality.
0:16:55 > 0:16:58I mean, this is exactly the kind of thing he was talking about.
0:16:58 > 0:16:59You've got a man
0:16:59 > 0:17:01crushed by a log.
0:17:01 > 0:17:06It's a ridiculous picture and it's a kind of doggerel poem to Maria,
0:17:06 > 0:17:11but thanking her for the fact that he didn't die when this log
0:17:11 > 0:17:13landed on his belly, as it looks.
0:17:13 > 0:17:16It seems to me this is so much about what's best about Lawrence.
0:17:16 > 0:17:19You get this description of the pictures and then you get
0:17:19 > 0:17:22that immediate transition into some kind of metaphysic.
0:17:22 > 0:17:26You know, deepest of all things, among the mountain darkness
0:17:26 > 0:17:29was the ever-felt fear.
0:17:29 > 0:17:33First of all gods was the unknown God who crushed life at any
0:17:33 > 0:17:35moment and threatened it always.
0:17:37 > 0:17:40It's classic Lawrence, isn't it? You know, he's only been here a little
0:17:40 > 0:17:42while and he's already got a sense of what
0:17:42 > 0:17:45he thinks is the deepest experience of being up here in the mountains.
0:17:54 > 0:17:58Lawrence was completely enchanted by the little chapel
0:17:58 > 0:18:01and thought it would make an ideal place to stop for the night.
0:18:03 > 0:18:05Frieda had other ideas.
0:18:06 > 0:18:09For this daughter of a Prussian aristocrat,
0:18:09 > 0:18:13tramping panellists over the Alps like a vagabond was a great
0:18:13 > 0:18:16romantic fantasy and to complete the picture,
0:18:16 > 0:18:20she insisted on sleeping in a haystack.
0:18:20 > 0:18:26This is really nice, or would be if it was about 20 degrees warmer
0:18:26 > 0:18:30and four hours earlier, but I guess this is not unlike
0:18:30 > 0:18:35the circumstances in which Lawrence and Frieda found themselves -
0:18:35 > 0:18:38getting dark, freezing cold, hungry.
0:18:38 > 0:18:42I wonder if it has got any hay inside? Oh, wow!
0:18:43 > 0:18:48- OK. Well, there is no hay. There's logs.- Just a load of logs.
0:18:50 > 0:18:53Yeah, you couldn't sleep on that if you tried.
0:18:55 > 0:18:58"'It's lovely, lovely,' said Johanna.
0:18:58 > 0:19:03"But alas, gentle reader, worse than fleas,
0:19:03 > 0:19:07"worse even than mosquitoes on a sultry night is hay.
0:19:07 > 0:19:10"It trickles insidiously in.
0:19:10 > 0:19:13"It trickles and tickles your face. It goes in your ears
0:19:13 > 0:19:17"and down your neck and is around your waist.
0:19:17 > 0:19:22"The tickling becomes an intolerable irritation, then an inflammation."
0:19:24 > 0:19:28- I think the chapel would be better, do you think?- Probably.
0:19:28 > 0:19:31- I said we should have gone there. - That's right, you did.
0:19:31 > 0:19:32No, Lawrence was right.
0:19:47 > 0:19:52After a damp, itchy night in the hay barn, Lawrence describes wryly in
0:19:52 > 0:19:54Mr Noon how the following morning,
0:19:54 > 0:19:58freezing cold with sodden boots, like two ghosts, he and Frieda
0:19:58 > 0:20:02stumbled back down the valley to find the road.
0:20:05 > 0:20:08Somewhat grumpy, both dressed in Burberry raincoats,
0:20:08 > 0:20:11they made the next stage of their journey through the wide
0:20:11 > 0:20:15Austrian valleys on a combination of omnibus and train,
0:20:15 > 0:20:20as they headed for what was then the small farming town of Mayrhofen.
0:20:20 > 0:20:23One of the things that strikes me increasingly about Lawrence -
0:20:23 > 0:20:26I mean, a great genius, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff,
0:20:26 > 0:20:31but Lawrence often seems to me a sort of...a quite ridiculous figure.
0:20:31 > 0:20:34But that was something that he was very well aware of
0:20:34 > 0:20:36and he writes it into the essays of Twilight In Italy.
0:20:36 > 0:20:40He was keenly aware of the ridiculousness of their situation
0:20:40 > 0:20:42and certainly in person, he was fun to be with.
0:20:42 > 0:20:44Everybody says this about him.
0:20:44 > 0:20:47Jessie Chambers, his first girlfriend, says it,
0:20:47 > 0:20:50Frieda says it. He was very good at impersonating people
0:20:50 > 0:20:52and he could parody himself as well.
0:20:52 > 0:20:56Yeah. I find he is not very successful in the novels.
0:20:56 > 0:20:59I mean, I don't find him a very humorous writer there.
0:20:59 > 0:21:01We may have different senses of humour.
0:21:01 > 0:21:03I find him frequently hilarious in his novels.
0:21:03 > 0:21:06I mean, Mr Noon, I laughed pretty much from beginning to end
0:21:06 > 0:21:08and then in his poetry as well,
0:21:08 > 0:21:10"There was a little wowser, John Thomas his name,
0:21:10 > 0:21:12"and for every bloomin', mortal thing,
0:21:12 > 0:21:15"that little blighter's to blame."
0:21:15 > 0:21:18It goes on and it's about the male member
0:21:18 > 0:21:22and how it's responsible for all the troubles in the world and that's
0:21:22 > 0:21:25a pure comic poem, and then sometimes you get his mimicry,
0:21:25 > 0:21:28his capacity as a mimic in the poem, so there's one called
0:21:28 > 0:21:30The Oxford Voice that ends,
0:21:30 > 0:21:36"We are, we are, you know we are superior."
0:21:40 > 0:21:43Mayrhofen was the end of the road.
0:21:43 > 0:21:47From here it was just the mule tracks into the high Alps.
0:21:49 > 0:21:52Lawrence and Frieda ended up staying here for a couple of weeks.
0:21:52 > 0:21:56Lawrence worked on his poems, essays and the manuscript of
0:21:56 > 0:21:58Sons And Lovers and in the evenings,
0:21:58 > 0:22:02they enjoyed drinking and dancing with the local peasant farmers.
0:22:04 > 0:22:08They also went on hikes into the mountains and Lawrence,
0:22:08 > 0:22:13who was a keen botanist, made plant-hunting expeditions,
0:22:13 > 0:22:16including one particular trip into the deep,
0:22:16 > 0:22:19gloomy, clam gorge that runs south of the town.
0:22:20 > 0:22:26- Oh, my.- Gosh, it is horrifying. - Yeah.
0:22:26 > 0:22:29It's a very, very tortured man.
0:22:31 > 0:22:33Lawrence, brought up in the plain Puritan
0:22:33 > 0:22:36environment of the Methodist Chapel, was alarmed
0:22:36 > 0:22:39and fascinated by the gruesome crucifixes that
0:22:39 > 0:22:44appear on every peak and bend of the mountain roads and pathways.
0:22:44 > 0:22:48He wrote one of his most evocative essays describing the way
0:22:48 > 0:22:51the carvings of Christ change as one head south through
0:22:51 > 0:22:53the Tyrolean landscape.
0:22:55 > 0:22:58Part travelogue and part philosophical reflection,
0:22:58 > 0:23:02this was the first of the many idiosyncratic travel pieces
0:23:02 > 0:23:04which Lawrence wrote throughout his life
0:23:04 > 0:23:08and which found a ready audience in newspapers and magazines.
0:23:11 > 0:23:15Lawrence and Frieda were joined in Mayrhofen by two English friends,
0:23:15 > 0:23:18David Garnett, the son of his new editor,
0:23:18 > 0:23:20and a man called Harold Hobson.
0:23:22 > 0:23:26You can tell why Lawrence loved it here.
0:23:26 > 0:23:28And on Wednesday, 28th August,
0:23:28 > 0:23:33the small party began the five mile climb to the summit of
0:23:33 > 0:23:37a mountain that today straddles the border between Austria
0:23:37 > 0:23:40and Italy and which would, in every sense,
0:23:40 > 0:23:45prove the high point of Lawrence's Alpine expedition.
0:23:45 > 0:23:51God, this is stunning! Transcendently beautiful.
0:23:51 > 0:23:56Lawrence was seeing it...something of this kind for the first time.
0:23:56 > 0:24:02Oh, yeah. Well, that is something. Jeez!
0:24:08 > 0:24:11"And then it was the top.
0:24:11 > 0:24:13"Smooth as plates of iron,
0:24:13 > 0:24:17"a flat summit with great films of snow like silver
0:24:17 > 0:24:21"plating on the black, bronze iron, and a wind,
0:24:21 > 0:24:27"a painful, cold wind and low in the near distance, a brown shelter hut.
0:24:27 > 0:24:31"And beyond the brow, a great peak,
0:24:31 > 0:24:35"a magnificent wedge of iron thrust into the upper air
0:24:35 > 0:24:39"and slashed with snow slashes, as if it were dazzlingly alive.
0:24:39 > 0:24:41"So brilliant and living
0:24:41 > 0:24:44"the snow stripes on its aloof, dark body.
0:24:46 > 0:24:50"For Gilbert, it was one of the perfect things of all his life,
0:24:50 > 0:24:55"that peak, that single, great sky living blade of rock."
0:24:56 > 0:25:01He clearly had an ecstatic moment on this spot looking at Italy
0:25:01 > 0:25:03and he writes about it several times.
0:25:03 > 0:25:07He gives this moment of joy to several of his characters
0:25:07 > 0:25:09and I would say that amongst prose writers,
0:25:09 > 0:25:12nobody describes mountains as well as Lawrence does.
0:25:12 > 0:25:16I mean, he's got these great, great terms for them like
0:25:16 > 0:25:17"white fanged" or
0:25:17 > 0:25:21"striped snow panthers circling around a great camp."
0:25:24 > 0:25:28Thank you, Lawrence, for having come here so that we can come here too.
0:25:30 > 0:25:32There's something beautifully moving about it,
0:25:32 > 0:25:36the working-class boy from Nottingham, which has been
0:25:36 > 0:25:39blighted by industrialism, and he comes here to this pure
0:25:39 > 0:25:42and wonderful place, and it's great.
0:25:42 > 0:25:46There's a real sense of arrival, but also I think it's so moving
0:25:46 > 0:25:49because, you know, this is the start of Lawrence's great
0:25:49 > 0:25:54life of global adventure, of the savage pilgrimages he calls it.
0:25:55 > 0:25:57It's just wonderful.
0:26:00 > 0:26:04- So, Geoff, where now?- I think... - Italy?
0:26:05 > 0:26:10For Lawrence, his transcendent moment on top of this mountain
0:26:10 > 0:26:14was a point from which there was no going back.
0:26:15 > 0:26:19The adrenaline of travel, of looking at the world, inspired
0:26:19 > 0:26:23a growing sense of ambition and freedom in his writing.
0:26:25 > 0:26:28The poetry collection that he was working on at the time,
0:26:28 > 0:26:31Look! We Have Come Through! -
0:26:31 > 0:26:34a collection whose title seems to capture that moment
0:26:34 > 0:26:37of emergence through the Alps, was a radical
0:26:37 > 0:26:41and shocking break with the poetic conventions of Edwardian England
0:26:41 > 0:26:44and it provoked a reaction of prurience
0:26:44 > 0:26:47and snobbery in the literary circles of London.
0:26:49 > 0:26:51I think a lot of his friends were appalled
0:26:51 > 0:26:55and a lot of reviewers were appalled.
0:26:55 > 0:26:59It's the directness of utterance that's so shocking
0:26:59 > 0:27:01and especially coming out of a period
0:27:01 > 0:27:04of Georgian poetry when everything
0:27:04 > 0:27:11had been rhyming and manufactured and manicured and presented as
0:27:11 > 0:27:14almost sort of baroque units of thought, this wasn't that at all -
0:27:14 > 0:27:19it's a great, big, direct splurge onto the page.
0:27:19 > 0:27:22Lawrence is all about feeling and sensation
0:27:22 > 0:27:24and I think he thought that man had become cut off from that
0:27:24 > 0:27:29and it was his job, both as a poet and as David Herbert Lawrence,
0:27:29 > 0:27:34to reopen negotiations with the world and finding that form of poetry,
0:27:34 > 0:27:37what became, I suppose, free verse, was his way of doing that.
0:27:40 > 0:27:44"Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me!
0:27:44 > 0:27:49"A fine wind is blowing the new direction of Time.
0:27:49 > 0:27:51"If only I let it bear me, carry me,
0:27:51 > 0:27:53"if only it carry me!
0:27:53 > 0:27:58"If only I am sensitive, subtle, oh, delicate a winged gift!"
0:28:00 > 0:28:03I remember reading Lawrence when I was in my early 20s
0:28:03 > 0:28:07and even then I thought, "I don't know what to do with this stuff."
0:28:07 > 0:28:10It just wasn't like anything else that I was reading.
0:28:10 > 0:28:11It's hippy poetry.
0:28:11 > 0:28:16It is really wild. It's like watching somebody...
0:28:16 > 0:28:20doing open-heart surgery on themselves.
0:28:20 > 0:28:25You don't know where to look on occasions, and it is exciting
0:28:25 > 0:28:27and it is arousing as well.
0:28:29 > 0:28:33Of course, Lawrence's appetite for defying convention was not
0:28:33 > 0:28:35restricted to his poetry.
0:28:35 > 0:28:38In the years after he completed Sons And Lovers,
0:28:38 > 0:28:42he went on to write two revolutionary novels, The Rainbow
0:28:42 > 0:28:46and Women In Love, substantial works of fiction that are both
0:28:46 > 0:28:50technically ground-breaking and which deal with political
0:28:50 > 0:28:53and sexual content that provoked one reviewer at the time
0:28:53 > 0:28:57to comment that The Rainbow "is a greater menace to our public
0:28:57 > 0:29:01"health than any of the epidemic diseases".
0:29:01 > 0:29:04The book was banned after only a few weeks in print.
0:29:04 > 0:29:08Women In Love took five years to find a publisher.
0:29:08 > 0:29:11It wasn't until the 1960s that Lawrence finally found
0:29:11 > 0:29:15popular acclaim after he was championed by the influential
0:29:15 > 0:29:17critic FR Leavis,
0:29:17 > 0:29:20made famous by a failed legal attempt to ban
0:29:20 > 0:29:23Lady Chatterley's Lover and celebrated in one
0:29:23 > 0:29:26of the iconic films of the decade, Ken Russell's Women In Love.
0:29:30 > 0:29:35For a time, Lawrence was the pin-up of the hippy generation
0:29:35 > 0:29:40but in 1970, the pendulum swung back in the other direction
0:29:40 > 0:29:42when an American feminist made a furious
0:29:42 > 0:29:47and incisive attack on Lawrence, labelling him a misogynist.
0:29:48 > 0:29:51Lawrence undoubtedly had a case to answer.
0:29:51 > 0:29:55He made plenty of unpalatable statements about women
0:29:55 > 0:29:58but his venomous outbursts are contradicted in his best
0:29:58 > 0:30:01writing, particularly in Women In Love
0:30:01 > 0:30:05and The Rainbow, where he answers his critics head on by creating
0:30:05 > 0:30:07some of the most vital,
0:30:07 > 0:30:11liberated and fully realised female characters in literature,
0:30:11 > 0:30:14powerfully brought to the screen by Glenda Jackson
0:30:14 > 0:30:17and Jennie Linden in Ken Russell's film.
0:30:17 > 0:30:21You don't think one needs the experience of having been married?
0:30:21 > 0:30:24Oh, Gudrun, do you really think it need be an experience?
0:30:24 > 0:30:26It is bound to be. Possibly undesirable,
0:30:26 > 0:30:29but it is bound to be an experience of some sort.
0:30:29 > 0:30:30BABY CRYING
0:30:30 > 0:30:33Not really. More likely to be the end of experience.
0:30:34 > 0:30:39He was a great forward-thinking, prophetic person
0:30:39 > 0:30:42and, you know, one way of looking at where
0:30:42 > 0:30:46he leaves his women at the end of the whole cycle of The Rainbow
0:30:46 > 0:30:49and Women In Love is, you know, very much
0:30:49 > 0:30:52the position of the modern woman, who could be completely
0:30:52 > 0:30:57autonomous in having a child, for instance.
0:30:57 > 0:31:00She doesn't need a man to do that necessarily,
0:31:00 > 0:31:02she can live on her own.
0:31:02 > 0:31:05Everything that people think that is suspect about Lawrence,
0:31:05 > 0:31:08it's merely the degree of freedom
0:31:08 > 0:31:13and licence that he permits the female mind in the way that a woman
0:31:13 > 0:31:17might think about her body and about the sexual relationship with a man.
0:31:20 > 0:31:22He doesn't leave things at particular
0:31:22 > 0:31:26thresholds like other writers do. He goes all the way,
0:31:26 > 0:31:32he follows people into the most intimate moments of their lives.
0:31:32 > 0:31:35I mean, there's a lovely scene in The Rainbow where Anna,
0:31:35 > 0:31:39heavily pregnant Anna, fed up with her husband and wanting to annoy
0:31:39 > 0:31:41him and rebel against him
0:31:41 > 0:31:45takes off all her clothes and dances.
0:31:45 > 0:31:47She knows he's going to come in
0:31:47 > 0:31:49and he does, and he's horrified, horrified.
0:31:49 > 0:31:54He's disgusted by this spectacle of a pregnant woman with no shame.
0:31:56 > 0:32:00And Lawrence is right behind her, he's absolutely
0:32:00 > 0:32:05approving of her decision to annoy people by loving herself.
0:32:06 > 0:32:10Lawrence was both enraged and deeply hurt by the censorship
0:32:10 > 0:32:12and rejection of his work,
0:32:12 > 0:32:15not least because in many ways the model for those modern,
0:32:15 > 0:32:19liberated heroines of The Rainbow and Women In Love was his own
0:32:19 > 0:32:24spirited, unconventional and proudly independent wife Frieda...
0:32:27 > 0:32:29..an independence of which he was made powerfully
0:32:29 > 0:32:33aware up in the Alps, back in 1912.
0:32:39 > 0:32:43After their great climb, Lawrence
0:32:43 > 0:32:46and Frieda descended to the town below where their English
0:32:46 > 0:32:48walking companions took a train back home.
0:32:50 > 0:32:52After a couple of days' rest, Lawrence
0:32:52 > 0:32:56and Frieda were keen to get to Italy and they headed on south
0:32:56 > 0:32:59with another steep hike up a mountain called a Jaufen.
0:32:59 > 0:33:02- Slippy here.- I think I am keeping up with you rather well, Geoff.
0:33:02 > 0:33:06- You are but, of course, I am slowing down to make it easy for you.- I see.
0:33:06 > 0:33:10- You look to me like...- I can give you an assisting hand if you like.
0:33:10 > 0:33:11..you're about to faint.
0:33:14 > 0:33:18Late in the evening, as once again they found themselves cold,
0:33:18 > 0:33:21in fading light and uncertain of their location,
0:33:21 > 0:33:25Frieda chose her moment to reveal to Lawrence that a couple of days
0:33:25 > 0:33:30earlier, while he was off hunting for wild flower specimens, she had
0:33:30 > 0:33:35had sex with their walking companion Harold Hobson in a hay barn.
0:33:35 > 0:33:38I mean, it's really an extraordinary moment to choose.
0:33:38 > 0:33:41They are in some distress, they have had a very bad day,
0:33:41 > 0:33:44they are actually in quite considerable physical danger
0:33:44 > 0:33:47and this is the moment Frieda chooses to say this.
0:33:47 > 0:33:50But, yeah, it was quite a shock and he describes it.
0:33:50 > 0:33:56- He writes about it later on in about 1920...- In Mr Noon.
0:33:56 > 0:33:59Yeah, and writes about it in that incredible way, locating
0:33:59 > 0:34:03exactly what happens by saying, "Everything vague.
0:34:03 > 0:34:09"He turned vaguely away," so he just enters this kind of weird,
0:34:09 > 0:34:13stunned state, which Lawrence fixes with great precision by using
0:34:13 > 0:34:15that word "vaguely".
0:34:18 > 0:34:22"He turned vaguely and went clambering up the path
0:34:22 > 0:34:25"while she followed in silence behind
0:34:25 > 0:34:28"and so they climbed for some time."
0:34:29 > 0:34:32One of the things he liked about Frieda is that he couldn't
0:34:32 > 0:34:34walk all over her.
0:34:34 > 0:34:37This was a sort of early manifestation of this thing
0:34:37 > 0:34:41that he put such store by, that they should both be independent.
0:34:41 > 0:34:44You know, it made clear that she was no pushover,
0:34:44 > 0:34:45which is what he wanted.
0:34:48 > 0:34:52"Suddenly he turned to her. She was close behind him.
0:34:52 > 0:34:56"He dropped her knapsack and threw his arms around her.
0:34:56 > 0:35:01"'Never mind, my love,' he said. 'Never mind, never mind.
0:35:01 > 0:35:03"'We do things we don't know we're doing.'
0:35:03 > 0:35:06"And he kissed her and clung to her passionately
0:35:06 > 0:35:10"in a sudden passion of self-annihilation."
0:35:14 > 0:35:18Lawrence was so convinced of the importance of Frieda
0:35:18 > 0:35:21that he was willing to self-annihilate -
0:35:21 > 0:35:24he needed her, whatever she did.
0:35:24 > 0:35:27He felt their relationship was essential to his existence
0:35:27 > 0:35:29and central to his writing.
0:35:31 > 0:35:35The journey to Italy turned out to be the beginning of a life together,
0:35:35 > 0:35:38a life of continual movement.
0:35:38 > 0:35:40After the First World War,
0:35:40 > 0:35:44they began a peripatetic existence in Italy, Sicily and Sardinia.
0:35:46 > 0:35:49Before embarking on a voyage that Lawrence referred to
0:35:49 > 0:35:52as a savage pilgrimage,
0:35:52 > 0:35:55first to what was then Ceylon, modern day Sri Lanka,
0:35:55 > 0:35:58then Australia, where they stayed for nearly four months
0:35:58 > 0:36:02and where he wrote a novel called Kangaroo.
0:36:02 > 0:36:06After sailing the Pacific to San Francisco, they finally drew
0:36:06 > 0:36:10to a halt in the high desert and mountains of New Mexico,
0:36:10 > 0:36:12where they stayed on and off for three years
0:36:12 > 0:36:16and from where they made forays into Mexico.
0:36:16 > 0:36:19Some of Lawrence's later writing from the period
0:36:19 > 0:36:22when he was travelling the globe has landed him
0:36:22 > 0:36:26with the grim label of being both a racist and a fascist -
0:36:26 > 0:36:31a fascist mostly because he wrote about fascist leaders in Kangaroo
0:36:31 > 0:36:33and in a Mexican novel, The Plumed Serpent.
0:36:35 > 0:36:39He is fascinated by the idea, as many people were in the '20s,
0:36:39 > 0:36:43of the powerful leader - the authority that really will solve
0:36:43 > 0:36:46these awful problems we got into with the First World War.
0:36:46 > 0:36:50If someone can show us a way forward that's not like that,
0:36:50 > 0:36:53then that's interesting, and Lawrence explores the subject -
0:36:53 > 0:36:56to explore something is not to be a fascist.
0:36:56 > 0:37:00In 1925, when he was in a bit of a corner to say
0:37:00 > 0:37:04what he believed in politically, he said, "If I believe in anything,
0:37:04 > 0:37:07"I believe in a good form of socialism."
0:37:07 > 0:37:08And that puts it straight.
0:37:08 > 0:37:10Lawrence is not a fascist.
0:37:17 > 0:37:21It's easier to understand why Lawrence has been labelled a racist.
0:37:21 > 0:37:24He made rude comments about pretty much every race
0:37:24 > 0:37:27with which he came into contact,
0:37:27 > 0:37:30none more so than the English.
0:37:31 > 0:37:34However, these outbursts are mitigated by the openness
0:37:34 > 0:37:37and seriousness with which he engaged with the people
0:37:37 > 0:37:40and places to which he travelled.
0:37:40 > 0:37:44In the early 1920s, Lawrence developed a growing interest
0:37:44 > 0:37:47in learning from ancient, pre-Christian civilisations,
0:37:47 > 0:37:50in particular the Native Indians of America.
0:37:55 > 0:37:59Lawrence and Frieda came to the small town of Taos in New Mexico,
0:37:59 > 0:38:04at the invitation of a wealthy American heiress, Mabel Dodge,
0:38:04 > 0:38:07who lived here with her soon-to-be husband, Tommy Luhan -
0:38:07 > 0:38:11a Native American from the nearby Taos Pueblo tribe of Indians.
0:38:13 > 0:38:17Mabel Dodge Luhan, who was a wealthy heiress,
0:38:17 > 0:38:19who had settled in Taos,
0:38:19 > 0:38:22whose mission was to save the Indians,
0:38:22 > 0:38:25had read some of his writing about nature
0:38:25 > 0:38:29and thought only HE could capture the Indians,
0:38:29 > 0:38:33and so they had never met, had no contact with each other,
0:38:33 > 0:38:36and he said yes, he would come to Taos.
0:38:36 > 0:38:42He arrived here on the day of his 37th birthday in 1922
0:38:42 > 0:38:46and, immediately, Mabel had him ride off
0:38:46 > 0:38:50to one of the Indian reservations, and so he was immediately immersed
0:38:50 > 0:38:55in the Native American culture and immediately began writing about it.
0:38:55 > 0:38:57CHANTING
0:39:01 > 0:39:05He would go to the formal dances that the Indians held
0:39:05 > 0:39:10at their various villages, and he was transfixed by it.
0:39:13 > 0:39:16And, in the evenings, they would go to Mabel's house
0:39:16 > 0:39:19and her husband would bring in his friends.
0:39:19 > 0:39:22Lawrence would dance with the Indians.
0:39:26 > 0:39:32He wanted to live and show people an authentic experience with nature,
0:39:32 > 0:39:35an authentic experience with sexuality,
0:39:35 > 0:39:38an authentic experience with spirituality.
0:39:38 > 0:39:43And it was particularly the spirituality that he hoped
0:39:43 > 0:39:45to get from the Taos natives.
0:39:48 > 0:39:53On 17th May 1924, Mabel Dodge Luhan took Lawrence
0:39:53 > 0:39:57and Frieda on an expedition up into the mountains
0:39:57 > 0:40:01to visit an historic Indian site - the Arroyo Seco Cave.
0:40:02 > 0:40:07This impressive, gaping cavern, gave Lawrence the idea
0:40:07 > 0:40:10for one of his most controversial short stories.
0:40:10 > 0:40:12One of his most important
0:40:12 > 0:40:17and most misunderstood stories is The Woman Who Rode Away.
0:40:17 > 0:40:22The story is set here in this cave in northern Mexico,
0:40:22 > 0:40:24which, for thousands of years,
0:40:24 > 0:40:28had been a ceremonial site for the Native Americans.
0:40:28 > 0:40:32Earlier times, they had practised rituals,
0:40:32 > 0:40:35possibly even of human sacrifice.
0:40:38 > 0:40:42The Woman Who Rode Away is the story of the white American wife
0:40:42 > 0:40:46of a mine owner who gives herself to be sacrificed
0:40:46 > 0:40:48by a tribe of Indians.
0:40:48 > 0:40:53Lawrence used the exact geography here at Arroyo Seco in his story
0:40:53 > 0:40:57and the ritualised killing takes place on the small ledge
0:40:57 > 0:41:00at the back of the cave.
0:41:02 > 0:41:07She's living a dead life - pursuing silver - pursuing money.
0:41:07 > 0:41:13And her spirit is dead and she decides to ride away from that life.
0:41:13 > 0:41:19And she, willingly, without fighting, goes to her own sacrifice,
0:41:19 > 0:41:23just as Lawrence dreamed of riding away from his own life.
0:41:23 > 0:41:28He wrote about riding off in the desert and never coming back.
0:41:28 > 0:41:32He also wrote about sacrificing his heart to the sun.
0:41:32 > 0:41:36He could understand why somebody would want to sacrifice
0:41:36 > 0:41:38themselves to the sun.
0:41:41 > 0:41:42CHANTING
0:41:50 > 0:41:54"The throng below gave the low, wild cry.
0:41:54 > 0:41:58"Then the priests turned her round, so she stood with her back
0:41:58 > 0:42:03"to the open world, her long blonde hair to the people below."
0:42:11 > 0:42:15Lawrence's story has enraged feminist critics,
0:42:15 > 0:42:20who interpreted the work as an act of hatred towards women.
0:42:20 > 0:42:23Many people have called it a misogynistic story
0:42:23 > 0:42:25because a woman is sacrificed.
0:42:25 > 0:42:31It's clear in the story that the woman represents Western culture,
0:42:31 > 0:42:36and that she is being sacrificed in order for a renewal of life
0:42:36 > 0:42:38for all the people,
0:42:38 > 0:42:41and that was Lawrence's goal from the beginning,
0:42:41 > 0:42:44and it was the goal of all the modernists.
0:42:44 > 0:42:48They sought out primitives because they felt they still had a connection
0:42:48 > 0:42:51with the earth that modern people had lost,
0:42:51 > 0:42:53and that needed to be renewed.
0:42:58 > 0:43:02In fact, much of Lawrence's writing about New Mexico,
0:43:02 > 0:43:04and indeed much of his later writing in general
0:43:04 > 0:43:07with its interest in the environment,
0:43:07 > 0:43:11anthropology and spirituality, has been dismissed or mocked.
0:43:13 > 0:43:17I think academia is getting its revenge on Lawrence, the wild man,
0:43:17 > 0:43:21Lawrence, the hairy man, Lawrence, the green man,
0:43:21 > 0:43:24Lawrence, the scorner of civilisation.
0:43:24 > 0:43:28It's hard to say what Lawrence hated most. Did he hate class the most?
0:43:28 > 0:43:31Did he hate the wealthy the most?
0:43:31 > 0:43:35Did he hate civilisation the most?
0:43:35 > 0:43:39I think you could say that he hated most sophistication.
0:43:39 > 0:43:43He believed that humans could recover
0:43:43 > 0:43:47and that's the education of the soul in nature
0:43:47 > 0:43:51and in gender and sexuality that you see in his books.
0:43:58 > 0:44:01Lawrence and Frieda stayed in Taos for three months
0:44:01 > 0:44:04before moving up into the mountains,
0:44:04 > 0:44:09eventually taking up the offer of a small ranch from Mabel Dodge.
0:44:11 > 0:44:17The Lawrences lived here during the spring and summer of 1924 and 1925.
0:44:17 > 0:44:20In those days, it took a whole day on horseback
0:44:20 > 0:44:22to ride to and from town.
0:44:22 > 0:44:26So, Frieda and Lawrence would stay here more or less permanently
0:44:26 > 0:44:31and have people come in and out of town for their supplies,
0:44:31 > 0:44:33but they lived here frugally
0:44:33 > 0:44:39and they'd made what they could of what animals they had around here.
0:44:39 > 0:44:45It offered that sense of nature that was every bit a part of Lawrence.
0:44:45 > 0:44:51His mind was free here and he didn't have the problems
0:44:51 > 0:44:55with his everyday life that he might have elsewhere in the world,
0:44:55 > 0:44:59so that's why he enjoyed living here at the ranch.
0:44:59 > 0:45:03Lawrence often talked of the spirit of the place
0:45:03 > 0:45:07and it's very much indeed present here.
0:45:09 > 0:45:13"Curious as it may sound, it was New Mexico that liberated me
0:45:13 > 0:45:17"from the present era of civilisation,
0:45:17 > 0:45:21"the great era of material and mechanical development.
0:45:21 > 0:45:26"In the magnificent, fierce morning of New Mexico, one sprang awake
0:45:26 > 0:45:29"a new part of the soul woke up suddenly
0:45:29 > 0:45:32"and the old world gave way to the new."
0:45:36 > 0:45:38In many ways, the wandering,
0:45:38 > 0:45:40the expedition that Lawrence embarked on
0:45:40 > 0:45:44with Frieda that summer back in 1912, found its climax
0:45:44 > 0:45:49and a kind of conclusion here among the ponderosa pine trees
0:45:49 > 0:45:51at Kiowa Ranch.
0:45:51 > 0:45:56It's really easy to comprehend why Lawrence would have come to Mexico.
0:45:56 > 0:46:01When you come west, when you are in this big landscape, you're humbled -
0:46:01 > 0:46:05it's just so big and so magical.
0:46:06 > 0:46:09All the elements are visible -
0:46:09 > 0:46:11the wind, air, fire and earth -
0:46:11 > 0:46:15just when you look out across some kind of vista,
0:46:15 > 0:46:18and so that must have been something he would have welcomed
0:46:18 > 0:46:23and that he obviously responded to in a deep, deep way.
0:46:25 > 0:46:30In the end, he found the sincere spirituality
0:46:30 > 0:46:36that he had been seeking all his life since his early youth -
0:46:36 > 0:46:42a true religious connection with life - with the life forces.
0:46:42 > 0:46:45He felt he found it here in New Mexico.
0:46:55 > 0:46:58From New Mexico, Lawrence travelled back to Europe,
0:46:58 > 0:47:03where he spent most of the remaining five years of his life in Italy -
0:47:03 > 0:47:05the country where he completed his last novel,
0:47:05 > 0:47:07Lady Chatterley's Lover.
0:47:09 > 0:47:13The appeal of Italy - the climate - the cost of living,
0:47:13 > 0:47:18it's un-Englishness, was much what it had been 14 years earlier
0:47:18 > 0:47:22when he arrived here with Frieda in September 1912,
0:47:22 > 0:47:27desperate to complete that novel in his rucksack, Sons and Lovers.
0:47:27 > 0:47:30# Oh, ho-ha-ha... #
0:47:32 > 0:47:35MAN SINGS IN ITALIAN
0:47:44 > 0:47:50So, here we are in Gargnano, with this indispensable,
0:47:50 > 0:47:53if not entirely reliable, guidebook to help us,
0:47:53 > 0:47:57not only have you got the book but I see you've got a new dress on.
0:47:57 > 0:48:00- I have scrubbed up. - You had that in your rucksack.
0:48:00 > 0:48:02It's self ironing, I take it.
0:48:02 > 0:48:03It was carefully packed.
0:48:03 > 0:48:08This is done in honour of Frieda who, when they arrived in the first
0:48:08 > 0:48:11Italian town, she was looking like a tramp.
0:48:11 > 0:48:16She was in the dress she'd had on for all those nights in haystacks
0:48:16 > 0:48:19and she had a dark green Burberry coat, Panama hat with a red ribbon
0:48:19 > 0:48:23around it, of which the colour had bled into the hat itself.
0:48:23 > 0:48:25- Very fetching.- But they weren't roughing it to the extent
0:48:25 > 0:48:27of actually carrying their luggage with them.
0:48:27 > 0:48:30They had great trunks that were being sent from Bavaria.
0:48:30 > 0:48:33Once they arrived, then she was able to get into her party frocks
0:48:33 > 0:48:36- and start feeling like a woman again. - Aha!
0:48:36 > 0:48:40- And I'm sure Lawrence was delighted. - Yeah.
0:48:43 > 0:48:45# Oh, ho-ha-ha
0:48:45 > 0:48:49# Ha-ha, ho-ho... #
0:48:51 > 0:48:56So that's a street where Lawrence and Frieda would walk.
0:48:56 > 0:49:00Professor Stefania Michelucci is a leading expert on Lawrence's time
0:49:00 > 0:49:04in Italy, and she's arranged a visit to the Villa Igea,
0:49:04 > 0:49:08the apartment where Lawrence and Frieda stayed in Gargnano -
0:49:08 > 0:49:13the apartment where Sons and Lovers was finally completed.
0:49:13 > 0:49:17In here - this is the first floor of the Villa Igea,
0:49:17 > 0:49:20where Lawrence and Frieda lived.
0:49:20 > 0:49:23They were here for about six months, before going back to England.
0:49:23 > 0:49:26There is the kitchen, the original kitchen,
0:49:26 > 0:49:29although many things have changed now,
0:49:29 > 0:49:32where one of his plays was written
0:49:32 > 0:49:36and set - The Fight For Barbara.
0:49:36 > 0:49:40Of course, many things have changed since then.
0:49:40 > 0:49:42Yes, difficult to imagine it, isn't it?
0:49:42 > 0:49:45With all the modern furniture.
0:49:45 > 0:49:48- Difficult.- The windows in the bedroom were these ones.
0:49:48 > 0:49:50- Oh, my gosh!- Yeah.
0:49:52 > 0:49:55So that's where he spent so many months.
0:49:55 > 0:49:58That's the view they had.
0:49:59 > 0:50:04- Wow! That is so lovely.- God!
0:50:04 > 0:50:07- This is where he got Sons And Lovers polished off.- Exactly.
0:50:07 > 0:50:10He completed Sons And Lovers, his first masterpiece.
0:50:10 > 0:50:13I couldn't imagine a place more different to where
0:50:13 > 0:50:14he was writing about.
0:50:14 > 0:50:16You don't get much further
0:50:16 > 0:50:19from a Nottinghamshire coal village than this.
0:50:19 > 0:50:22- Yeah, it's the opposite pole. - Exactly, exactly.
0:50:22 > 0:50:26As far as colours are concerned - light and everything.
0:50:31 > 0:50:36Sitting here in the Villa Igea, looking out across Lake Garda,
0:50:36 > 0:50:39Lawrence took his mind back to Eastwood...
0:50:41 > 0:50:45the world of miners, the narrow streets of terraced houses
0:50:45 > 0:50:48and the memories of his upbringing.
0:50:50 > 0:50:54Today, Sons And Lovers still feels surprisingly modern.
0:50:54 > 0:50:58100 years ago, it was ground-breaking writing.
0:50:58 > 0:51:01I mean, the two things that must strike anybody
0:51:01 > 0:51:02who picks up Sons And Lovers
0:51:02 > 0:51:08are, firstly, the remarkably intimate portrayal
0:51:08 > 0:51:12of a certain form of life that the novel gives us,
0:51:12 > 0:51:15and it gives us it in a documentary way.
0:51:15 > 0:51:21So it describes not only a way of life of the mining community,
0:51:21 > 0:51:25it describes the language they use and it explains it to us.
0:51:26 > 0:51:28It actually glosses that life,
0:51:28 > 0:51:31and the second part of the novel
0:51:31 > 0:51:34that's very striking is that it tries
0:51:34 > 0:51:37to get inside the characters' experiences,
0:51:37 > 0:51:42particularly at moments when they're feeling passion, feeling desire,
0:51:42 > 0:51:46feeling most uncomfortable and uncertain about their experiences.
0:51:49 > 0:51:53One of the most striking features of Sons And Lovers is its powerful
0:51:53 > 0:51:56insight into the minds of its female characters,
0:51:56 > 0:52:00an authenticity that was achieved in part thanks to Frieda.
0:52:00 > 0:52:04From the beginning of their relationship, Frieda read
0:52:04 > 0:52:07and became involved with Lawrence's work,
0:52:07 > 0:52:10just as his first girlfriend, Jessie Chambers, had done.
0:52:12 > 0:52:17During the final reworking of Sons And Lovers, Frieda helped him
0:52:17 > 0:52:21find a new dimension to the women in the book, and also encouraged him
0:52:21 > 0:52:25to take a more objective view of his story and his relationship
0:52:25 > 0:52:29with his mother, whose death provides the end point of the novel.
0:52:33 > 0:52:36The fourth and final version of Sons And Lovers
0:52:36 > 0:52:39was posted off to David Garnett,
0:52:39 > 0:52:43Lawrence's editor back in England in November 1912,
0:52:43 > 0:52:46where it was finally published in May the following year.
0:52:47 > 0:52:51The book was no great commercial success
0:52:51 > 0:52:56but this unusual opportunity to look in on the lives of working people
0:52:56 > 0:53:00was widely reviewed and put Lawrence on the literary map.
0:53:00 > 0:53:04Lawrence said about Sons And Lovers, I write
0:53:04 > 0:53:08because I want folk - English folk - to alter and have more sense,
0:53:08 > 0:53:11to have them change their view, not only of the working class,
0:53:11 > 0:53:17but also of what passion might be, of what sexuality is,
0:53:17 > 0:53:20all of those things he wanted to expose people to,
0:53:20 > 0:53:23and that was a very startling thing, I think, for them,
0:53:23 > 0:53:25and very challenging as well.
0:53:25 > 0:53:28This is a book which divides its readers.
0:53:28 > 0:53:29Some people are saying,
0:53:29 > 0:53:32"This really understands women and children and marriages
0:53:32 > 0:53:34"better than anything else we ever read.
0:53:34 > 0:53:36"Where has this writer been hiding?"
0:53:36 > 0:53:39The other side is saying, "This is all rather distasteful.
0:53:39 > 0:53:43"It's all about sex. We're getting far too close to the bone.
0:53:43 > 0:53:46"We don't want this kind of writing, do we now?
0:53:46 > 0:53:50But Sons And Lovers went on to become arguably Lawrence's
0:53:50 > 0:53:53most successful novel in the 20th century -
0:53:53 > 0:53:57modern, democratic, highly readable and especially popular
0:53:57 > 0:54:01with generations of teenagers and students.
0:54:06 > 0:54:09Sons And Lovers has a subdued ending.
0:54:09 > 0:54:13In the final pages, Paul Morel, an isolated figure,
0:54:13 > 0:54:15is deep in mourning for his mother,
0:54:15 > 0:54:19but the novel concludes with a powerful sense of a young man
0:54:19 > 0:54:22heading towards the light, about to embark on a new life.
0:54:23 > 0:54:27Looking out of their new bedroom window, Lawrence and Frieda
0:54:27 > 0:54:32undoubtedly shared the same optimistic sense of a new beginning.
0:54:33 > 0:54:35Lawrence finished Sons And Lovers
0:54:35 > 0:54:38and then begins to move on to the next phase of his life.
0:54:38 > 0:54:42There's something really beautiful and moving
0:54:42 > 0:54:45and inspiring about the life he makes with Frieda -
0:54:45 > 0:54:49living incredibly cheaply, always travelling third class,
0:54:49 > 0:54:51often in very, very bad health,
0:54:51 > 0:54:55but leading a life of incredible adventure.
0:55:03 > 0:55:08In 1930, 18 years after he walked up the Weekleys' garden path
0:55:08 > 0:55:13in Mapperley, DH Lawrence died in France of tuberculosis
0:55:13 > 0:55:15at the age of only 44,
0:55:15 > 0:55:17Frieda was at his side.
0:55:19 > 0:55:23Appropriately, Frieda interred the remains of her wandering,
0:55:23 > 0:55:27nature-loving husband, up here at their ranch in New Mexico -
0:55:27 > 0:55:31the place where she herself was buried 26 years later.
0:55:32 > 0:55:36Lawrence's own symbol of the phoenix perches
0:55:36 > 0:55:39optimistically on top of the small chapel.
0:55:43 > 0:55:46But the remoteness and inaccessibility
0:55:46 > 0:55:50of Lawrence's memorial up at the Kiowa Ranch can't help
0:55:50 > 0:55:54but seem symbolic of his continued status as an outsider.
0:55:55 > 0:55:59Today, many universities no longer teach the apparently
0:55:59 > 0:56:02politically incorrect DH Lawrence.
0:56:03 > 0:56:06And Sons And Lovers has long ceased to be
0:56:06 > 0:56:09a must-read book for every teenager.
0:56:11 > 0:56:14The thing that saddens me about Lawrence is that he suffered
0:56:14 > 0:56:20so much abuse when he was alive and the fact that he continues
0:56:20 > 0:56:25to suffer it seems very harsh, that justice hasn't been done.
0:56:25 > 0:56:28He, to my mind,
0:56:28 > 0:56:32is probably the greatest writer of English prose.
0:56:34 > 0:56:37The academy has gotten its revenge on Lawrence.
0:56:37 > 0:56:39They have peripheralised him.
0:56:39 > 0:56:43If you peripheralise even a major artist long enough,
0:56:43 > 0:56:45they will vanish into the mists,
0:56:45 > 0:56:48they will be dropped from the collective memory,
0:56:48 > 0:56:51and it could happen to Lawrence - it's hard to tell.
0:56:53 > 0:56:55Lawrence has always been divisive.
0:56:55 > 0:56:58It's hard to think of a writer who has been loved
0:56:58 > 0:57:01and loathed in such equal measure,
0:57:01 > 0:57:04but, today, perhaps the balance is shifting against him,
0:57:04 > 0:57:08and his bad reputation - much of which seems undeserved -
0:57:08 > 0:57:13is in danger of obscuring one of the most original, vital,
0:57:13 > 0:57:16and provocative voices in the language.
0:57:17 > 0:57:20He'd written his books in the way he intended to.
0:57:20 > 0:57:22He'd seen it through.
0:57:22 > 0:57:26It had cost him dear. You know, he was exiled,
0:57:26 > 0:57:29he was ridiculed, he was persecuted.
0:57:29 > 0:57:31Even at the time of his death,
0:57:31 > 0:57:35he was still seen by some as a meddling pornographer, really.
0:57:37 > 0:57:40But he was true to himself. I think that's what Lawrence is about.
0:57:40 > 0:57:45He was true to himself. How many of us can say that as writers?
0:57:46 > 0:57:50It's very easy to dismiss any of his statements -
0:57:50 > 0:57:55any of his ideas on politics, on men, on women, on the human body -
0:57:55 > 0:57:57or the relationship between love and lust.
0:57:57 > 0:57:59And he would say, "Fine, disagree.
0:57:59 > 0:58:01"You just do some searching for yourself.
0:58:01 > 0:58:03"You work out what's actually going on."
0:58:03 > 0:58:06This is what I find really inspiring in him.
0:58:06 > 0:58:09It's not the case that I agree with any one of his statements
0:58:09 > 0:58:12but I do think that, whilst we're alive,
0:58:12 > 0:58:16during our years on earth, you might as well do some living
0:58:16 > 0:58:19and actually make a spiritual effort to work out what's going on,
0:58:19 > 0:58:22and that's what Lawrence is an example of.
0:58:22 > 0:58:25That's what he inspires me to do. He was so, so alive.
0:58:25 > 0:58:28I would say he was pro-life.
0:58:28 > 0:58:31Not in the political sense, but in the sense
0:58:31 > 0:58:37that he...he loved life.
0:58:37 > 0:58:39He made you want to be alive.
0:59:14 > 0:59:16Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd