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|title=The Trials of Radclyffe Hall

|sort=Trials of Radclyffe Hall, The

|publisher=Quercus

|date=March 2013

|website=http://www.dianasouhami.co.uk/

}}

It is a coincidence that the year 1928 saw the first appearance of two English novels which were denounced and initially suppressed on the grounds of obscenity and their potential to corrupt innocent readers – D.H. Lawrence’s 'Lady Chatterley’s Lover' and Radclyffe Hall's 'The Well of Loneliness'. Lawrence's many novels, stories and poems are widely read today, but Hall and her works are hardly remembered except by a minority. Diana Souhami has done her a service in this generous yet deeply probing life of a literary trailblazer.

That omission apart, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Souhami has brought the personalities to life as well as the atmosphere of the 1920s when Britain was evidently a much more repressive country than France and America. The years of the Second World War and the privations these relatively wealthy women had to ensure are also vividly portrayed. Shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize for Biography after its first publication in 1998, this is a relatively long and often sombre volume, but a very good read.

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