Paul Metcalfe

Because of his frank and honest portrayal of human sexuality in the controversial works for which he is best known, e.g. "Lady Chatterley's Lover" and "Women in Love", D. H. Lawrence was not widely respected in his day. In fact at the time of his death, he was considered little more than a pornographer. However E. M. Forester challenged this portrayal calling Lawrence "The greatest imaginative novelist of our generation", and with his extended reflection...

I decided to write this book because of the need for an effective system of managing and enhancing people's ability to communicate. Its applications span business as well as personal interactions. It can be a simple way of assessing the personalities of people around you and enabling you to better interact with them. I've played the role of an employee in middle management as well as upper management. One essential skill for any good manager is communication....

This is an introduction to The Tao of Human Interactions. I decided to write this book because of the need for an effective system of managing and enhancing people's ability to communicate. Its applications span business as well as personal interactions. It can be a simple way of assessing the personalities of people around you and enabling you to better interact with them. I've played the role of an employee in middle management as well as upper...

The Woman Who Rode Away' is a dark, troubling story set in the wilderness of South America. What makes this story compelling is that the woman is at the end of her personal tether and the Indians are at the end of their cultural one, they seek one another out for terrible but perhaps predictable uses. Each of them looks to the other for "salvation" in a way that expresses the desperation and futility of their situation.

The Princess' of the story is a spoiled, sexless woman who is thrown in with a passionate man whom she takes into her bed and then rejects. This rejection leads to his ultimate death. Lawrence again pleads his case for the necessary domination of woman by man and shows the sterility of a life lead without sexual passion. Set against the bleak mountains of South America, it is one of Lawrence's most enduring tales.

Glad Ghosts' is another of Lawrence's supernatural stories, set in the archetypical country house. He doesn't attempt to explain the supernatural happenings which occur but uses them to extol his own ideas of the power of the sex drive and the triumph of life over death.

Lawrence uses the story of a storm and the deaths it causes to revive the feelings for (if not an actual belief in) the old gods, in this case Mercury whose shrine is ignored by the tourists but who takes his revenge.

Adolf' is a charming story of a wild rabbit introduced by the father into a miner's home to the delight of the children and the despair of the mother. Larger questions of life and death and nature and civilisation are touched on with a light hand.

The Last Laugh' is another of Lawrence's supernatural stories, set in a dreamlike snowy London. The question left open is who the three people in the story saw on the snowy evening. Perhaps Pan, returned to destroy the Christian God, as the church is destroyed in the story and to bring love to the frigid young woman in the form of a policeman who is prevented from leaving the house. But why the other quite harmless, and Platonic lover, had to die...

'Delilah and Mr Bircumshaw was written by D H Lawrence in 1912. Lawrence is beginning to move away from his working class roots in this story, and exploring the relationship of a middle-class couple who have a slight argument, egged on by the wife's friend. Bircumshaw loses his dignity and self-respect for the comforts of married life. For all his insights into women, the misogynist in Lawrence can be detected.