D.H. Lawrence was an English novelist, poet and essayist. He was the fourth child of a north Midlands coal miner and virtually illiterate when he started work at the age of ten. No doubt these humble beginnings shaped his later views.

Following the cessation of World War I and the ending of the Spanish Flu pandemic which claimed nearly a quarter of a million British lives, Lawrence watched with growing alarm the decadent behaviour of elites.