By all accounts, Frieda von Richthofen was an interesting and charismatic woman, the daughter of an ancient aristocratic family who shocked polite society by having an affair with the young and penniless writer D H Lawrence, son of a coal miner, and then leaving her husband and young children to be with him. Apparently, he was inspired by their grand passion and differences in situation to write his most famous novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover which was banned as obscene for more than 30 years.

It commences with Frieda living a rather dull life, having rashly married a very conservative English don, and raising their three children in the countryside. A visit from her sister inspires her to return to her home town of Munich for a brief visit, but there she is captivated by the new and revolutionary ideas of free love and finds fleeting sexual excitement among the bohemian society. A series of events sees her return to her family and a determination to settle, but the arrival of her husband’s young student, Lawrence, some years later, changes all of that forever. Deciding she cannot live without the grand passion she feels will define her, she scandalously leaves her family and loses custody of her children, something she deeply and bitterly regretted. And life with Lawrence was neither easy nor comfortable.

It’s an interesting tale indeed, although Frieda’s exploration of her repressed sexuality and passionate affair with Lawrence simply reads as a somewhat tame bodice-ripper, not a very engaging one, interspersed with passages of guilt and agonising introspection. Somehow Frieda’s identity is really explored in this story, which is a shame, because it seems she changed how we view popular literature forever.

Reviewed by Lesley West