At 624 pages long, embarking on this book is not for the faint hearted. Nor will it give you an easy ride. The structure and form are kalaidescopic with different characters, scenes and issues coming in and out of the pattern. Take the entrance of Jackie Kennedy and musings on life in America or Lawrence’s rages and infatuations. If you can give yourself over to the narrative and let this writer take you on her and DH’s unexpected voyage then this is wonderful and unexpected journey. It is unformulaic, brave and often transporting.

I found this a difficult book to navigate: at it's heart is the figure of DH Lawrence, rather affectedly called 'the exile', and his infamous book 'Lady Chatterley's Lover, but stories spin off from there, loosely linked via Lawrence's own past, that of his wife, Frieda, the obscenity trial of the book which put Allen Lane in the dock and, rather oddly, Jackie Kennedy who wanders in in the early 1960s. There are large swathes of the book which are taken from the actual trial transcripts which are fascinating in themselves but which rather overpower the more nebulous fictional sections. With a tendency to feel directionless and a bit overlong, there are important issues at stake in the book about censorship, who gets to define what 'literature' is, the writing of sexuality and the pushing of boundaries.