“Is It a Book That You Would Even Wish Your Wife or Your Servants to Read?” Obscenity Law and the Politics of Reading in Modern England

Hilliard, Christopher

doi:10.1093/ahr/118.3.653

Cited by 11 publications

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“…Like D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, the subject of an obscenity trial upon its mass publication in Britain in 1960, the car was apparently acceptable in the hands of a privileged and trustworthy few, but dangerous when opened up to the (young) masses. 137 Even so, the Earl's misgivings about the Mini were not entirely unfounded. The Mini's excellent road holding gave an enticing margin of error that was all too often used up, especially by adventurous young drivers.…”

Section: Class Gender and Youthmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rethinking an Icon of Sixties Britain: The Mini and Its Place in the Post-War Motor Revolution

Harris

2022

Twentieth Century British History

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The Mini was launched in 1959 during Britain’s motor revolution. This iconic car has long been analogized with the popular iconography of the Sixties, but I argue here that this association only scratches the surface of its more complex meanings. Rather, the Mini embodied the tension arising from a motor revolution that was transformative yet limited. By looking at how the Mini was marketed, perceived, and used (and by whom), I suggest that it was a conduit through which Englishness and national decline were mediated against the backdrop of mass motorization. It also reflected the motor-car’s growing importance as a public and private space. I draw on a number of historical sources to make this argument, including automotive advertising, a source that is currently underutilized by historians. In doing so, I seek to overcome the normative tendency in academic history to overlook the car’s cultural significance.

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Section: Class Gender and Youthmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rethinking an Icon of Sixties Britain: The Mini and Its Place in the Post-War Motor Revolution

Harris

2022

Twentieth Century British History

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“…6. As regards women and the lower orders Establishment attitudes at this time were probably never better encapsulated than by Mervyn Griffith-Jones QC (Eton and Cambridge) who, as prosecuting counsel in the obscenity trial of D.H. Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover in 1960, asked the jury whether it was the sort of book 'you would wish your wife or servants to read' -see Hilliard (2013); subordination of women in the Conservative Party, another good index of Establishment opinion, was only now beginning to be challenged -see Campbell, 1987, 70-98; as to the prevailing Establishment view of 'coloured people' , this was seen in the dominant response of Establishment figures to the Notting Hill 'race' disturbances of 1958, for their part in which several white youths were given prison sentences. The reflection of Lord Pakenham (Eton and Oxford) on this incident in the House of Lords contained a blend, common at the time, of respect and condescension toward black people: 'I believe that our position in the matter was well expressed by Mr. Justice Salmon [Mill Hill and Cambridge] when passing sentence in one of these Notting Hill cases.…”

Section: Conclusion: Whither English Cricket?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a safer past: thoughts on the invocation of English cricket’s soul

Wagg

2020

Sport in Society

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This article is, in essence, an extended review of Arlott, Swanton and the Soul of English Cricket, an affectionate biography of two English cricket journalists by the distinguished writers Stephen Fay and David Kynaston, published in 2018. Promotional material issued for the book and the many favourable reviews it received all attested both to the very different temperaments of the two men and to things which, purportedly, they had in common-namely, an opposition to racism and to commercialism in cricket. However, a re-examination of the (much chronicled) lives of the two men and of the times they lived through shows these judgments to be oversimplified and misleading. In particular, assumptions about racism (and, thus, anti-racism) in the book fail to take into account the transition in Britain society from a paternalist, imperialist racism to a racism based on the supposed incompatibility of cultures. The leading exponent of the latter racism was the Conservative MP and theorist Enoch Powell. The first part of the title of this article is taken from an essay by the Scottish political theorist Tom Nairn, whose book The Break-Up of Britain, first appeared in 1977, with a second edition in 1981 (Nairn 1981). Nairn uses it, in a chapter on the English nationalism of Enoch Powell, to describe the literary inclinations of English poets such as Powell's favourite, A.E. Housman. The other part of the title was prompted by the publication in 2018 of Arlott, Swanton and the Soul of English Cricket, an affectionate biography of two English cricket journalists by the distinguished writers Stephen Fay and David Kynaston (Fay and Kynaston 2018). The article responds to Fay and Kynaston's book in several ways and for several, connected, reasons. First, the book's subjects, John Arlott and E.W. 'Jim' Swanton were important interpreters of the game and feature prominently in the lore of the English cricket in the second half of the twentieth century. Second, a key theme of the book-racism and the opposition to it of the two men-is rendered in a way that allows very little context to the sentiments they were expressing. Third, this omission crucially entails ignoring political analyses of the English game-notably that of Mike Marqusee, whose book Anyone but England (Marqusee 1994), 1 as so often since its publication in 1994, is acknowledged (it's mentioned once by Fay and Kynaston) but the arguments it makes are ignored. Fourth, this obscures the transition in British society, and in the English cricket world, from one dominant set of racist assumptions (inherent

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“…The Obscene Publications Act 1857 forbade the publication of obscene literature, as it was believed that the reading of such literature would encourage immoral behaviour among the more vulnerable readers of society, such as servants, women and children (cf. Hilliard, 2013;Marshik, 2006). The definition of "obscene" was officially formulated in the so-called Hicklin case in 1868, where the term was defined as any matter that might "deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences, and into whose hands" such matter will probably end up (Lehman, 2006, p. 169).…”

Section: Obscenity and Censorship In Britainmentioning

confidence: 99%

"Shocking" or a "Moving" Scene?

Liljegren

2020

educare

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I argue that there needs to be a greater critical awareness in parts of the academic world as regards the use of literary translations published at a time of state censorship. Using the first English translations of August Strindberg’s Giftas (1884; 1886) and I havsbandet(1890) as a case in point, this paper demonstrates the extent to which translations of books whose content clashed with the British Obscene Publications Act 1857 deviated from their source texts, often on the very points that made the books and their authors famous. Although there are more recent and uncensored translations available today, the old and censored translations of “provocative” authors such as Strindberg, Zola and Flaubert often outnumber more recent ones on the market, sometimes under the guise of being “Scholar’s Choice” editions. I will demonstrate that several literary scholars quote and refer to censored translations, even to the censored passages themselves, and that some use them in academic courses focussing on the very aspects that were censored. I therefore suggest that it should be made mandatory for all courses dealing with translated literature to include critical discussions on the use of translations.

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“Is It a Book That You Would Even Wish Your Wife or Your Servants to Read?” Obscenity Law and the Politics of Reading in Modern England

Cited by 11 publications

References 0 publications

Rethinking an Icon of Sixties Britain: The Mini and Its Place in the Post-War Motor Revolution

Rethinking an Icon of Sixties Britain: The Mini and Its Place in the Post-War Motor Revolution

Towards a safer past: thoughts on the invocation of English cricket’s soul

"Shocking" or a "Moving" Scene?

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