An insidious form of censorship

Dominic Cooke on why we must guard against a self-perpetuating climate of fear and timidity

Forty years ago, the Theatres Bill removed from the Lord Chamberlain his centuries-old power to censor the British stage. Under a law unchanged since 1843, every work intended for production in British theatres had first to be submitted to, and approved by, his office. Each work came back with a report from one of the censors, who became renowned for their hypersensitive ability to read sex and subversion into the most innocent of dialogue. Kenneth Tynan quotes some choice reports in his famous 1965 polemic The Royal Smut-Hound: the phrase ‘balls of the Medici’ is banned, for example (although the report does give the helpful suggestion that ‘testicles of the Medici’ would be acceptable’). Another personal favourite, also quoted by Tynan, is the following masterpiece of straight-faced absurdity: ‘Page 14: Omit “the perversions of rubber”. Substitute “the kreurpels and blinges of the rubber”.