The Spectator’s Notes | 18 December 2004

People won’t put it in Books of the Year, but there is no more entertaining Christmas present than The Lord Chamberlain Regrets by Dominic Shellard and Steve Nicholson (British Library). It is a history of British theatre censorship, and describes the strange system by which, until 1968, the chief courtier, the Lord Chamberlain, pre-censored all plays that were to be publicly performed. The system was always mistaken, and became increasingly absurd, as, well into the Fifties, the Lord Chamberlain tried unhappily to maintain the policy that there could be no jocular portrayal of Queen Victoria or even her son (‘the play shows up King Edward VII in a tiresome light as regards girls’). Two other tough rules were that Christ or God could not be impersonated on stage (perhaps we’re going back to that one) and that homosexuality could not be mentioned. Another was that plays should not depict the current politics of foreign countries, particularly ones which were, in theory at least, friendly.