D.H. Lawrence talk to Little Eaton Local History Society

Twenty summers ago, my mother passed away. I was her primary carer. She had always dreamed of visiting Canada but never made it, so I went on her behalf. Although D.H. Lawrence never visited Canada, it was a significant ‘unknown’ place in his writing as it is mentioned in his first novel, The White Peacock (1911) as a place of hope “where work is strenuous, but not life; where the plains are wide, and one is not lapped in a soft valley, like an apple that falls in a secluded orchard.”[i] It is also where Constance Chatterley and Oliver Mellors consider eloping to at the end of Lawrence’s last and most infamous novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928)[ii].

On my return from Canada, I moved to Little Eaton with my then girlfriend and got some work tarmacking with a company a few doors away. It was hard work, but probably the most enjoyable job I’ve ever done in terms of camaraderie. In May, I returned to give a talk to the Little Eaton Local History Society in my current capacity as a Senior Lecturer in English and Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent University.

I began the talk with reference to Ken Dodd, explaining how he got banned from a theatre in Nottingham because he refused to get off stage. He loved performing gags and didn’t care a hoot whether people caught the last bus or not. It’s a bit like that with Lawrence. There’s so much about him that you don’t know where to start and when to end. For example, in the 24hrs before my talk there had been 16,100 files uploaded to Google about the bearded one. A quick search of Google scholar revealed 2,500,100 references. Therefore, I am always keen to emphasize that, like Manuel in Fawlty Towers, I know nothing.

What I do know about Lawrence is he escaped a mining village, travelled the world, and possessed that most important of human characteristics – curiosity. For these reasons alone I could talk about him forever but cut my talk short of the 2hr mark before a couple of snoozers started snoring.

I enjoy talking about Lawrence because he constantly prods you in the ribs and keeps you on your toes. No subject was off bounds. More importantly, he didn’t want to just know about the world he wanted to connect to it which is why he lived such a restless life. As his wife Frieda wrote in her memoir Not I, but the Wind

‘To me his relationship, his bond with everything in creation was so amazing, no preconceived ideas, just a meeting between him a creature, a tree, a cloud, anything. I called it love, but it was something else – Bejahung in German, ‘saying yes.’’[iii]

The talk was in three parts, covering a potted history of his life, home and heritage, and his self-imposed exile – with various quotes and asides thrown in along the journey. You’re always meandering with Lawrence. He sways you from side to side. He doesn’t do linear.   

But the most important task on such evenings is to get people reading. I love his letters the most because of his acerbic wit and so would make any of the eight volumes of his Collected Letters my first port of call. If you want a sneak preview, watch one of my monthly Locating Lawrence video essays on YouTube. In terms of novels, you can’t go wrong with The Rainbow or Sons and Lovers. John Worthen’s The Life of an Outsider is a very user-friendly biography for those wanting an overview of his life and how it shaped his writing. In terms of contemporary fiction inspired by Lawrencian mythology, try Alison MacLeod’s Tenderness or Rachel Cusk’s Second Place. Whereas Geoff Dyer’s Out of Sheer Rage is probably my favourite book of all time and gets better the more familiar you become with Lawrence.

To join the D.H. Lawrence Society and enjoy monthly talks, an annual festival, and a free copy of the Journal of D.H. Lawrence Studies, visit the website here. To join the Little Eaton Local History Society visit here.

If you would like me to give a talk on Lawrence, get in contact.


[i] D. H. Lawrence, The White Peacock, with a Preface by Harry T. Moore (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1966), 67

[ii] For more on these points see see Evelyn Hinz ‘D. H. Lawrence and “Something Called ‘Canada’”’ Dalhousie Review, Vol 54 (2), 1974

[iii] Frieda Lawrence, Not I, But the Wind… (Delphi Classics, 2017)

Bletchley Park: AI, Diversity, and Anonymity

Bletchley Park county estate was the secret codebreaking headquarters during WWII where Alan Turing and co would crack the Enigma code and help bring an end to the war by an estimated two years, saving many lives in the process.

To ensure absolute secrecy, no transmission ariels were allowed to protrude from the buildings as this might raise suspicions with passing bombers. Instead, hundreds of bike riders were tasked with getting important information and updates to those who mattered. The rural location meant it was less likely to be targeted, but Bletchley was chosen for more pragmatic reasons. It was smack bang in the middle of the main train route between Cambridge and Oxford, meaning the best mathematicians could be brought up quickly and at short notice. Workers were allocated to specific huts and teams were forbidden from talking about what they were doing both during and after the war or else face charges of treason and imprisonment. So while returning soldiers were glorified, the codebreakers could only say they had menial office jobs. Such integrity seems unimaginable today where we are encouraged to share every experience, as this article demonstrates.

75% of the work force were women and Alan Turing, a gay man, was prosecuted for homosexual acts in 1952. As punishment, he accepted a hormone treatment known as ‘chemical castration’ rather than go to prison. In 1954, aged 41, he committed suicide from cyanide poisoning. He was granted a pardon in 2013 by then PM Gordon Brown after a national campaign. In 2017, the ‘Alan Turing Law’ was introduced which retroactively pardoned men cautioned or convicted under historical legislation that outlawed homosexual acts. This feels particularly relevant today given the attack by the Trump administration on diversity and LGBTQ+ identities. To put this into context,  Slate reports Trump ‘fired the Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to replace him with a white retired general, who is both significantly less qualified for the job by military standards and ineligible for the role by those same military standards’. So much for fairness and meritocracy. Bletchley was largely shaped by a gay man and a 75% female workforce, demonstrating the value of a diverse workplace.      

Due to its historic links to computing, Bletchley was the location for the first AI Safety Summit in 2013. It currently has an exhibition on ‘The Age of AI’ which is why I visited with students from Nottingham Trent University. We are about to embark on a research trip to Europe to see how AI and creative technology can help better engage younger people in the political process and civic engagement. Our research is fed back to councillors from Ashfield, Bolsover, and Mansfield to help inform policy and investment and builds on a research trip last year where we visited the first AI Gallery in Europe.

I feel ambivalent about AI. As a writer, I understand that stories are incredibly personal and the result of our unique social situations. We write stories because we want to share our experiences of life with the world. AI does not have experience or empathy or history and so I am dismissive of any fiction it produces because it is not shaped by  personal experience and so lacks the most fundamental quality of persuasion, ethos – the credibility of the speaker – to borrow from Aristotle.

But I do find myself increasingly turning to programmes like Chat GPT as a personal research assistant when I need to find the answer to an immediate question that will help me with setting a scene, such as what wild flowers grow in the hedgerow at a specific times of the year. And as someone who produces a monthly video essay based on the letters of D.H. Lawrence, I sometimes have difficulties sourcing an image to match the script, such as for the video above. I used a programme like DeepAI to generate an image of a ‘squashed friend locus beetle’ which Lawrence was aghast at when he encountered it in a market in Mexico in November 1924. Quite rightly, you have to flag the video up as including ‘artificial or synthetic content’ on YouTube.

One area of interest at the Bletchley exhibition regarded AI Influencers. These, like their human equivalents, are mainly used for branding and selling products. But what if we were able to create an AI Influencer related to our research aim? A virtual assistant who could break down complex ideas to make the political process more accessible, or was able to flag up flaws in populist conspiracy theories, explicitly explaining how Tommy Robinson or Andrew Tate were not victims of the Deep State but people who have broken specific laws.

Part of the drive towards conspiracy theories is firmly grounded in reality. Lots of people, particularly white men, feel alienated and ignored, and so it is understandable – to an extent – why they may find belonging in spaces where they feel listened to. Any kind of AI support would need to address these nuances but perhaps introduce more positive or alternative means of belonging than those determined by social media algorithms.

If you have any suggestions about our research question, please do get in contact. And whether you like AI or not, visit Bletchley at some point in your life to pay respect to the many unknown people who dedicated their lives – without recognition – to help bring an end to the war.    

Bletchley Park, Sherwood Dr, Bletchley, Milton Keynes MK3 6EB. The AI exhibition is on till 2026. Visit the website here.