Lady Chatterley’s Lover revisited – but is BBC version too steamy or not enough?

Papers divided over new TV adaptation, with Telegraph regretting absence of ‘sexual language’ and Sun claiming that it ‘borders on porn’

Almost a century after DH Lawrence wrote it and 55 years after the first Penguin paperback edition was cleared of obscenity, Lady Chatterley’s Lover is set to shock again – either because there is too much sex and bad language in a new BBC adaptation, or not enough.

The 90-minute drama, to be broadcast next month, reputedly contains one instance of the word “cock” and one “John Thomas” – the gamekeeper Mellors’ favoured term for the parts with which, in one of the more appallingly unforgettable scenes in the book, he enchants Lady Chatterley by entwining with honeysuckle and forget-me-not flowers. But there are no uses at all of the four-letter words “fuck” or “cunt”, which ensured that publication of the full text was barred for decades and landed in court in 1960.

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