To be clear, I’ve never read the book, but came to this passage via a circuitous route.

Probably my favourite podcast of the last few years is David Runciman’s “Past, Present Future”.

It has a series of episodes on great legal trials – one of which featured the landmark obscenity trial of D. H. Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterley’s Lover”.

As always, it was a fascinating deep-dive. He shared that it was his first reading the book – in order to cover the trial‘s repercussions and reflection of British society at the time.

As a result, he released a further episode on the book itself – when I heard the opening lines – which I found perhaps as resonant for 2026 as for when it was published almost one hundred years ago.

“Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.

The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes.

It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles.

We’ve got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.”

Happy new year.