Lately I saw a sight most quaint;

London's lily-white policemen faint

In virgin outrage as they viewed

The nudity of a Lawrence nude.

Oh what a pity, Oh don't you agree

That fig-trees aren't found

in the land of the free

As this ditty illustrates, DH Lawrence took a dim view of his compatriots' prudery. Not only was his most successful novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover, banned here for 30 years after his death, but his risque paintings could not be shown either.

Today a previously unknown Lawrence screen silk will be unveiled at Nottingham University, his alma mater, as the centrepiece of a DH Lawrence research centre.

For years the writer, who based much of The Rainbow around his time at the university, was persona non grata after running away with his professor's wife, Frieda, whom he later married.

In 1929, the occasion for the ditty, police stepped in when the then home secretary objected to Lawrence's depiction of the Holy Family that included a naked blonde being fondled from behind, and another canvas of nuns ogling a naked peasant Adonis. Lawrence had to send them back to his home in New Mexico to stop them being destroyed.

The new work lay undocumented for 40 years after the death of Frieda in 1956. Lawrence himself died in 1930.

John Worthen, professor of DH Lawrence studies at the university, said the screen silk was quite unlike the rest of his work - "like a lino cut, but done on silk". Because of damage due to the altitude and dryness of New Mexico, the work had taken four years to restore.