It's a meeting of two Notts literary leading lights – Bert and Billy – or, to give them their Sunday names, Eastwood iconoclast D H Lawrence and Southwell wordsmith William Ivory. As Billy adapts Lawrence for the BBC, he tells JENNIFER SCOTT why he's disappointed it's being filmed in South Africa, rather than Nottingham, and why he'd rather hear the ring of Notts accents than Keira Knightley doing cod Northern

THERE is something special, William Ivory feels, about Nottingham writers.

It's to do with the contrasts, he feels, the industrial heritage and the wild, surrounding landscapes.

A potent, kicking-at-the-confines brew that seeped into the bloodstream of the likes of Byron, Lawrence, pictured below, Sillitoe and may (although he doesn't say it) account for the heart-on-the-sleeve magic of William's own screenplays.

"We're a manic, bipolar county," is how he puts it. "We have a very different way of looking at things in Notts. It forms part of our bad side, in terms of our reputation.

"But there's light as well as dark. Industry and the mines formed the county so much. I remember, as a boy on the bins [his first job was as a local binman] how the streets would just stop and the fields would begin. There's no fading out here. It's black and white, laughter, tears, fighting, resting."

Which is why William's (or Billy, as he's known to us Notts-dwellers) next project is so interesting.

For Billy, from Southwell, is taking on Lawrence in a new, joint adaptation of The Rainbow and Women In Love for BBC4.

Previously Billy's work, which includes his beautifully-wrought debut Journey To Knock, as well as TV classics like A Thing Called Love and Common As Muck, has produced only original dramas. This is his first adaptation.

"I can think of easier people to start with," he grins.

"But we're doing it for BBC4, which is fantastic. As a channel, it's able to take a weightier piece."

For Billy, Lawrence is a labour of love. He's been working on the two-part 90-minute drama for five years, having been approached by veteran producer George Faber.

"George came up to Nottingham one afternoon and said, 'You ought to do some Lawrence. Nobody's given Women In Love a go since the Russell film.'

"I realised early on – there's a reason for that," he laughs.

That film, with its naked fireside wrestling between Alan Bates and Oliver Reed, not to mention Glenda Jackson's flashing-eyed bull taunting, is regarded by many as the definitive Lawrence adaptation.

But Billy has certain reservations about it.

It's a while since he saw it and he didn't want to re-watch it while working on his own version.

"I thought the Russell film was a bit prurient and didn't really get to grips with what the book's about," he claims. "I will have a bit of wrestling but it's used in a very different way. And we're not going off to the Alps at the end.

"There are parts of the book where you feel Lawrence is formulating an argument. The sex should be apocalyptic, rather than smutty. I've taken extracts that are not in the book: his letters and short stories. I've mucked around with it a bit but I believe I'm putting the soul of the book on screen."

Stephen Lowe, his fellow Notts lad and Lawrentian light-bearer said, on hearing the news: "At least you're a native!"

Alas, Billy's efforts won't be made in Notts itself. "We're having to film in South Africa because it's cheaper than Nottingham," he says, clearly disappointed. "It's a shame because the area where it's set is still exactly the same. It would be wonderful to film it here but it costs too much. The only issue you've got in South Africa is if a monkey runs across the set. It doesn't look much like Ollerton then!"

Billy is, at least, pushing to have it cast by Notts actors – despite the fact names like Helena Bonham Carter, Keira Knightley and Michael Sheen are being discussed by the BBC. "I would like to hear Notts accents," he insists. "They tend to pick people doing a cod Northern accent and you lose all the rhythms of the speech."

This sense of protectiveness over one of his favourite writers stems from Billy's love of literature – a love that came to him late.

His father Bill was a renowned news editor and assistant editor of the Evening Post.

During his early years, it appeared as if the two had little in common. The son of the Evening Post wordsmith buried himself in the Beano and never touched a book "to the extent they thought I had learning difficulties" he says.

Then, at the age of 13, he picked up an Alistair MacLean book after seeing a TV adaptation of it. "221 pages and nothing but words and I read it. It was wonderful and I was hooked. When I should have been having girlfriends I did nothing but read and go to the theatre. The style that inculcated in me was quite a literary one."

He is a regular visitor to the D H Lawrence birthplace museum and Heritage Centre at Eastwood.

"It's fantastic, that place," he enthuses. "You get a real sense of this lad from Eastwood who made his way out into the world with his head bursting with ideas."

Although Lawrence originally wrote The Rainbow and Women In Love as two parts of the same novel, they were published separately and have normally been treated as such on screen. Their styles are very different – Women In Love can, Billy says, be seen as the first great modern novel.

In reuniting them, not to mention trying to fillet their complex content for a two-part drama, Billy faces a mammoth task.

"Women In Love was much more figurative and impressionistic. It's one of those books where the style and subject matter come together," he says.

"Lawrence describes it as a war novel. People had lost those traditional means by which they expressed themselves. Collectively, the world was in shock. People were struggling towards a new means of expression.

"There was a shift of perspective as to where the self features in a narrative structure."

Women In Love's unique style has, he says, made it easier to adapt than The Rainbow. "Because it's a kind of dreamscape, you can drift in and out of Women In Love," he says. "The Rainbow is a lot tougher because it's so episodic. It's a saga and you have to try to tell as much of it as you can."

Women In Love, Parts One and Two, is due to be screened next year.