Early in the New Year, copies of the original, unexpurgated version of Lady Chatterley’s Lover will appear on the shelves at Watford Public Library.

“We have ordered stiff-backed copies and they should be ready for our readers in about a month’s time,” Mr R.C. Sayell, the borough librarian, told a reporter on Monday.

Mr Sayell has not read “Lady C” but says the Old Bailey jury’s verdict of “Not Guilty” on an obscenity charge is considered by him and his committee as sufficient justification for buying copies for Watford readers.

But the Vicar of Watford (the Rev. John G. Downward) has advised all young people who are not students of the writer to “cut D.H. Lawrence right out of their reading”.

In the current issue of his parish magazine, the Vicar writes: “One of the most marked features of current literature, both in this country and America, has been the production of novels and stories in which little is left to the imagination, in such a way that if the imagination is a bit grubby at the start, the whole thing disturbs.

“In some cases, it sets a person off on the road to ruin.”

He goes on: “If you read a Penguin such as this with a detached mind, critically and dissociating yourself from being involved in the characters, you will be able to pass a considered opinion and decide for yourself whether it is mud (which sticks) or not. But a twisted, irreverent, mixed-up approach to sex only makes the beginning of the maniac...”

[From the Watford Observer of December 9, 1960]

 

I think those of your readers who have to travel to London every day will agree that the time has come for the LMS to say if there is any hope of reasonable travelling for unfortunates living north of Watford. The time-keeping is deplorable and is getting worse, and we have steadily increasing overcrowding.

We realise there is a war on, if only because the LMS offcials tell us this so often. But we would like the company to know that we are far from content with the present state of affairs.

The only method of airing his grievances against huge corporations open to the ordinary citizen seems to be to write to his local paper.

Yours faithfully, “Boxmoor”

[A Reader’s Letter from the Watford Observer of December 22, 1944]

 

The wife of a man who came home late insisted upon a reason. “When I go out without you,” he said, “I do not enjoy myself half as much, so it takes me twice as long.”
    
Conjurer: “You saw me put your watch in your handkerchief?” Small boy (on stage): “Yes.” “You can feel it still in the handkerchief?” “Yes.” “You can hear it ticking?” “Yes, but—” “But what?” “My watch hasn’t been going since I took the works out at school.”

“I teach my parrot only short words.”
“Do you? Now, I should think parrots were better adapted to learning polysyllables.”

[Three winter jokes from the Watford Observer of December 1, 1928]