N ot known for his humour, DH Lawrence thought of Lady Chatterley’s Lover as a serious novel about the sacred nature of sex. But some of the activity between Connie and the gamekeeper Mellors is funny, either unintentionally (as in the scene where they garland each other’s naked bodies with flowers) or with a playful recognition of carnal absurdity: his penis is “farcical” and intercourse involves a “ridiculous bouncing of buttocks”. More comic still was the fallout from the book: customs officers seizing banned copies, high court jinks, innumerable skits and cartoons. As Guy Cuthbertson shows in his entertaining book, “It’s not a comic novel as such, but one way or another, it created laughter.” On a steam railway in Devon, you can ride in a carriage called Lady Chatterley. Boots, blouses, thongs, earrings, pens, postcards and saris also bear her name and there have been endless jokey variations on the title: Lady Chatterley’s Pullover, Lady Chatterley’s Loofah, Lady Loverley’s Chatter and so on.…