The Go-Between experience. Among other writers commenting on the book's contemporary context, Paul Binding has pointed out that its famous opening phrase, “The past is a foreign country”, had first been used by Hartley’s friend Lord David Cecil in his inaugural lecture as Goldsmith's Professor in 1949. Ali Smith revisited the observed parallel drawn between the treatment of class and sexuality in "The Go-Between" and in "Lady Chatterley's Lover" (1928). D. H. Lawrence’s novel was not allowed unexpurgated circulation in Britain until after "The Go-Between"s appearance, but perhaps, she speculated, Hartley's novel helped prepare the climate for the overturning of the British
The Go-Between simple, almost gentle story of a boy lost in a strange world of emotions." There have been regular editions from Penguin Books and other sources since 1958. By 1954 translations were being prepared in Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Japanese, French and Italian. Others followed later in Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Romanian and German. The novel has also been set as an exam text with a study guide dedicated to it and there have been interdisciplinary studies on psychological and philosophical themes there. Later literary interpretations looked beyond the book’s immediately noticeable themes. For Colm Tóibín in his introduction to a 2002