When I was studying for my degree, I took home my holiday reading which included this most notorious of DH Lawrence's novels. My mother, upon discovering it on my bedside table, promptly consigned the book to the dustbin. "I've never had that sort of book in this house," she told me, "and I don't intend starting now."

I did attempt to point out that the book was firstly not "dirty" but was regarded as a classic of English literature, that, secondly, it was required reading and I had to write an essay on it and, thirdly, she was not in any position to judge it as "dirty" since she hadn't read it. Despite my protestations, the book remained in the dustbin. I purchased another copy which I read (the front of which I discreetly covered) on the train on my way back to Leeds.

Of course, on a popular level the book stands for sex and snigger and Lady Chatterley became a name synonymous for the aristocrat who liked her "bit of rough". When it was finally published in November 1960, it caused a minor sensation, following the most celebrated show trial of the decade at which the prosecuting counsel, Mervyn Griffith-Jones, asked the jury that memorable question: "Is it a book that you would have lying about the house? Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?" But there is much more between the covers of the book than the descriptions of sex. Lawrence had a loathing for what was happening to the countryside and in his lifetime he witnessed the ending of centuries of Britain's agricultural story, when farms lost their labourers who went in search of easier and better paid occupations in the towns. He had a deep love of the countryside as evidenced in the many descriptions in the novel:

The wood was silent, still and secret in the evening drizzle of rain, full of the mystery of eggs and half-open buds, half-unsheathed flowers. In the dimness of it all trees glistened naked and dark, as if they had unclothed themselves, and the
green things on earth seemed to burn with greenness.

Following the court judgment that declared it was not obscene, Lady Chatterley's Lover sold two million copies within the year. I guess many readers were more interested in the graphic descriptions of the antics of Lady Chatterley and her gamekeeper lover than those of the countryside. But not everyone. The reviewer in the American magazine Field and Stream was a more discerning reader and reputedly wrote in 1959: "Although written many years ago, Lady Chatterley's' Lover has just been re-issued... and this fictional account of the day-to-day life of an English gamekeeper is still of considerable interest to outdoor-minded readers, as it contains many passages on pheasant-rearing, the apprehending of poachers, ways to control vermin, and other chores and duties of the professional gamekeeper.

"Unfortunately, one is obliged to wade through many pages of extraneous material in order to discover and savour these sidelights on the management of a Midland shooting estate, and in this reviewer's opinion, the book cannot take the place of JR Miller's Practical Gamekeeper."