John Thomas & Lady Jane

PENGUIN BOOKS
     
    D.H. LAWRENCE’S JOHN
THOMAS AND LADY JANE ACCORDING TO SPIKE MILLIGAN
     
    Spike Milligan was
born at Ahmednagar in India in 1918. He received his first education in a tent
in the Hyderabad Sindh desert and graduated from there, through a series of
Roman Catholic schools in India and England, to the Lewisham Polytechnic.
Always something of a playboy, he then plunged into the world of Show Business,
seduced by his first stage appearance, at the age of eight, in the nativity
play of his Poona convent school. He began his career as a band musician, but
has since become famous as a humorous scriptwriter and actor in both films and
broadcasting. He was one of the main figures in and behind the infamous Goon
Show. Among the films he has appeared in are Suspect, Invasion, Postman’s
Knock, Milligan at Large and The Three Musketeers.
     
    Spike Milligan’s
published work includes The Little Potboiler, Silly Verse for Kids', Dustbin
of Milligan-, A Book of Bits ; The Bed-Sitting Room (a play); The
Bald Twit Lion ; A Book of Milliganimals; Puckoon; Small Dreams of a
Scorpion; The Mirror Running (a book of poetry); Transports of Delight',
The Milligan Book of Records, Games, Cartoons and Commercials', Badjelly the
Witch; Dip the Puppy; The Spike Milligan Letters and More Spike Milligan
Letters, both edited by Norma Fames; Open Heart University; The Q
Annual; Unspun Socks from a Chicken’s Laundry; The 101 Best and Only Limericks
of Spike Milligan; There’s a Lot of It About; The Melting Pot; Further
Transports of Delight; Startling Verse for All the Family; The Looney: An Irish
Fantasy; The Lost Coon Shows; It Ends With Magic; The Bible According to Spike
Milligan: The Old Testament ; Lady Chatterley's Lover According to Spike
Milligan, Wuthering Heights According to Spike Milligan; and D.H. Lawrence's
John Thomas and Lady Jane According to Spike Milligan. With the late Jack
Hobbs he also wrote William McGonagall: The Truth at Last, William
McGonagall Meets George Gershwin and William McGonagall — Free/all. His unique and incomparable seven volumes of war memoirs are: Adolf Hitler:
My Part in His Downfall, ‘Rommel?’ 'Gunner Who?’, Monty: His Part in My
Victory, Mussolini: His Part in My Downfall, Where Have All the Bullets Gone?,
Goodbye Soldier and Peace Work. To celebrate his seventieth birthday
Penguin published a special edition of his first novel Puckoon.
     
    Spike Milligan
received an honorary CBE in 1992.



Thanks are due to the Estate of
Frieda Lawrence Ravagli
     
     
    PENGUIN BOOKS
     
    Published by the
Penguin Group
    Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England
    Penguin Books USA
Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
    Penguin Books
Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia
    Penguin Books Canada
Ltd, 10 Alcom Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2
    Penguin Books (NZ)
Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand
     
    Penguin Books Ltd,
Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England
     
    First published by
Michael Joseph 1995
    Published in Penguin
Books 1996 1 3579 10 8642
     
    Copyright © Spike
Milligan Productions Ltd, 1995
    All rights reserved
     
    The moral right of
the author has been asserted
     
    Printed in England by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc
     
    Except in the United
States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall
not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise
circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or
cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition
including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser



Foreword
    --------------------
     
     
     
    John Thomas and Lady
Jane was the second of three versions of Lady Chatterley, all very different.
It was given its title by the wife of Julian Huxley, who read the manuscript
and was very cross morally, so she suggested, rather savagely, that it should
be called this since, she said, these words were frequently used in the book
for the male and female sexual organs. Strangely enough, Lawrence agreed. The
words ‘John Thomas’ and ‘Lady Jane’ were, however, never used in the book
(which leaves plenty of room for others that are a lot naughtier).
    Spike
Milligan

Chapter I
    --------------------
    O URS IS essentially a woeful age, so
is eighty. So we refuse to take it woefully. The cataclysm has fallen and has
been badly hurt in the fall. We have got