The barrister’s books

Eskişehir, Türkiye

Sunday 21 April 2024

Above: Caricature of Leo McKern (1920 – 2002) as Horace Rumpole from the episode “Rumpole and the Younger Generation“

“Inspiration is something one possesses by the hard and bitter labour of every day.“

Salvador Dali

Above: Spanish artist Salvador Dali (1904 – 1989)

All writers need inspiration.

Ideas have to come from somewhere, preferably in a way that almost knocks the writer sideways with excitement and triggers new and brilliant thoughts in a glorious chain reaction that leads to an effortless bestseller.

Inspiration is useful not only for the start of your writing project, but also on a daily basis as you struggle to write each line.

So how do you position yourself so that this kind of inspiration will come to you?

Is it enough just to find a writing location with a view of Krakatoa erupting?

Or does inspiration come at random from within?

Inspiration is when your mind makes a connection between concepts resulting in a new idea.

It is often an automatic process.

Songwriters have been known to wake up with an original tune in their head that subsequently becomes a number one hit for them.

People sometimes dream stories or situations, which then form part of their writing.

Writers claim that a change of environment inspires them.

Above: 1888 lithograph of the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa, Indonesia

Going on holiday inspires people to write.

Spending time in a culture different to your own makes you aware of details of people and life that you normally overlook.

The truth is that inspiration can come from a number of sources.

If you are stuck for ideas, here are some simple ways in which it might hit you:

Relax:

It is hard to be inspired after a hard day at work.

You need to empty your mind of the daily stresses and worries relating to your own life.

Writing a substantial work requires you to live in the imaginary world you create every time you write.

You have to leave the real world behind when you upload this pretend universe into your mind.

That is why you need to relax in order to absorb yourself completely in your story.

Inspiration will then come more easily.

Look into your past:

Are there any unusual events in your life history that could be adapted in some way to provide you with material to write about?

Traumatic events from long ago that you might find cathartic to explore in a fictional form?

You may find a way to come to terms with your own part at the same time as writing a gripping narrative.

Are there people you have met (and perhaps would rather have not met) that could provide the basis for the characters in your story?

Midnight, not a sound from the pavement
Has the moon lost her memory?
She is smiling alone
In the lamplight, the withered leaves collect at my feet
And the wind begins to moan

Memory, all alone in the moonlight
I can dream of the old days
Life was beautiful then
I remember the time I knew what happiness was
Let the memory live again

Every street lamp seems to beat
A fatalistic warning
Someone mutters and the street lamp sputters
And soon it will be morning

Daylight, I must wait for the sunrise
I must think of a new life
And I mustn’t give in
When the dawn comes, tonight will be a memory too
And a new day will begin

Burnt out ends of smoky days
The stale, cold smell of morning
A street lamp dies, another night is over
Another day is dawning

Touch me, it’s so easy to leave me
All alone with the memory
Of my days in the sun
If you touch me, you’ll understand what happiness is
Look, a new day has begun

Above: Barbara Streisand singing “Memory” from the musical Cats

Look around you:

What do you see happening in the world outside your window?

Watch the people on the bus, walking their dogs, driving past in a hurry.

Imagine their lives and the reasons behind what they are doing.

Are they hiding a secret?

Could they be plotting a crime or planning to escape the clutches of an abusive partner?

Are they spying on you while you are spying on them?

The world has many layers of mystery surrounding it.

Feel free to unpeel them in your imagination and place them in your writing.

If you have a view that encompasses a wide area of landscape, try to imagine the details of the community that lives there or what would happen to someone arriving there from another part of the world who struggles to cope in this alien environment.

If God had a name what would it be?
And would you call it to His face?
If you were faced with Him in all His glory
What would you ask if you had just one question?

And yeah, yeah, God is great
Yeah, yeah, God is good
Yeah, yeah, yeah-yeah-yeah

What if God was one of us?
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Tryin’ to make His way home?

If God had a face what would it look like?
And would you want to see
If seeing meant that you would have to believe
In things like Heaven and in Jesus and the Saints
And all the Prophets?

And yeah, yeah, God is great
Yeah, yeah, God is good
Yeah, yeah, yeah-yeah-yeah

What if God was one of us?
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Tryin’ to make His way home?

Just tryin’ to make His way home
Back up to Heaven all alone
Nobody callin’ on the phone
‘Cept for the Pope, maybe in Rome

And yeah, yeah, God is great
Yeah, yeah, God is good
Yeah, yeah, yeah-yeah-yeah

What if God was one of us?
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Tryin’ to make His way home?

Just tryin’ to make his way home
Like a holy rolling stone?
Back up to Heaven all alone
Just tryin’ to make His way home

Nobody callin’ on the phone
‘Cept for the Pope maybe in Rome

Look at people you know:

It is possible to draw inspiration from people you know either personally or because they are famous without libelling them.

Play safe by mixing characteristics and swapping sexes.

Change their age and ethnicity.

What you need inspiration for is the actual personality traits not the physical traits.

Take one person’s penchant for drink and another excessive optimism and combine them with a third person’s unstoppable ambition, to create a new character.

Above: Clip from Iggy Azalea video “Fancy“

Damn, damn, damn, damn
I’ve grown accustomed to her face
She almost makes the day begin
I’ve grown accustomed to the tune that she whistles night and noon
Her smiles, her frowns, her ups, her downs
Are second nature to me now
Like breathing out and breathing in
I was serenely independent and content before we met
Surely I could always be that way again
And yet
I’ve grown accustomed to her looks
Accustomed to her voice
Accustomed to her face

She’s second nature to me now
Like breathing out and breathing in
I’m very grateful she’s a woman and so easy to forget
Rather like a habit one can always break and yet
I’ve grown accustomed to the trace of something in the air
Accustomed to her face

Look at other writing:

Being inspired by another writer is not the same as infringing their copyright (although it is usually safer if there is no obvious evidence of similarity).

You can create new ideas by bouncing old ones against each other, but if you want to take someone else’s ideas then make sure they have been dead for at least 70 years.

You could write an adaptation of many 19th century stories without infringing copyright.

You could take out-of-copyright characters and insert them into your own stories.

Think also about whether other writers, living or dead, have failed to explore subjects that you think need to be tackled.

Fill in the gaps that you perceive to be in the literature that is out there.

Well, you should see my story reading baby, you should hear the things that she says,
She says: “Hon, drop dead, I’d rather go to bed with Gabriel Garcia Marquez.”
Uhh-huh!

Above: Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927 – 2014)

Cuddle up with William S. Burrows, leave on the light for Bell Hooks,
I’ve been flirtin’ with Pierre Berton ’cause he’s so smart in his books

Above: American author William S. Burroughs (1914 – 1997)

Above: US author Gloria Jean Watkins (aka bell hooks) (1952 – 2021)

I like to go out dancing,
My baby loves a bunch of authors
My heart’s so broke and bleedin’
Baby’s just sitting there
Doing some reading

Above: Canadian author Pierre Berton (1920 – 2004)

So I started watching some TV, played my new CD player too,
She said: “Turn it off or I’ll call the cops and I’ll throw the book at you.“
All this arguing made me get dizzy, called my doctor to come have a look
I said: “Doctor, hurry!” He said:
“Don’t worry, I’ll be over when I finish my book.”

I like to go out dancing,
My baby loves a bunch of authors
We’ve been livin in hovels
Spendin’ all our money on
Brand new novels

So I got myself on a streetcar and it drove right into someone,
You know the driver said:
“I was lookin’ straight ahead!“
But he was reading the Toronto Sun
“So?“

So my honey and me go to a counsellor to help figure out what we need
She said: “We’ll get your love growing,
but before we get going, here’s some books I’d like you to read.“

I like to go out dancing,
My baby loves a bunch of authors
Lately we’ve had some fricton
‘Cause my baby’s hooked on
Short works of fiction

So we split and went to a party, some friends my girl said she knew
But what a sight ’cause it’s authors’ night and the place looks like a Who’s Who

Now I’m pounding the ouzo
with Mario Puzo

Above: American author Mario Puzo (1920 – 1999)

Who’s a funny fella?
W.P. Kinsella

Above: Canadian author William Patrick Kinsella (1935 – 2016)

Who brought the cat?
Would Margeret Atwood?

Above: Canadian author Margaret Atwood

Who needs a shave?
He’s Robertson Davies!

Above: Canadian author Robertson Davies (1913 – 1995)

Ondaatje started a food fight, salmon mousse all over the scene

Above: Sri Lankan-born Canadian author Michael Ondaatje

Spilled some dressing on Doris Lessing, these writer types are a scream!

Above: British author Doris Lessing (1919 – 2013)

I like to go out dancing,
My baby loves a bunch of authors
We’ll be together for ages
Eatin’ and sleepin’ and
Eatin’ and sleepin’ and
Eating and sleeping and
Turnin’ pages.

Yeah!

Look at bestsellers:

Read examples of the most popular novels.

Watch the top films and TV shows.

Above: The Oscar statuette Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences award

Above: Scene from the 45th Emmy Awards, 19 September 1993 – The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry.

Go to the theatre.

Above: The Globe Theatre, London, England

Listen to the radio.

Choose your genre and be aware of what is successful in that genre by looking at what the audience responds to.

Then try to think of something you could write that will also appeal to the same audience.

You are building a bridge of confidence between what the public knows and what you want to present to them, so your writing must have some elements of familiarity whilst also containing something new and stimulating.

Remember your dreams:

One or twice in your life you will dream up a story in your sleep with blockbuster potential, so keep a notebook and pen by your bed just in case.

Look out for random thoughts:

Usually they are meaningless and useless, but occasionally a flash of genius will pass unexpectedly through your head.

They can strike any time any place, so be ready.

Redevelop your imagination.

Let your ideas brew:

Call it percolating, gestating, procrastinating, inertia – there is something that happens in our heads when we have ideas for wiring and we let them stew and bubble for days or weeks before we do anything about it.

It is as if the ideas become entrenched and start to make connections in your mind.

They grow like a virus, taking over your thoughts, becoming real, preparing you to start writing whenever the guilt you feel from not writing finally overpowers you.

I like the way you smile at me
I felt the heat that enveloped me
And what I saw I liked to see
I never knew where evil grew

I should have steered away from you
My friend told me to keep clear of you
But something drew me near to you
I never knew where evil grew

Evil grows in the dark
Where the sun it never shines
Evil grows in cracks and holes
And lives in people’s minds

Evil grew, it’s part of you
And now it seems to be
That every time I look at you
Evil grows in me

If I could build a wall around you
I could control the thing that you do
But I couldn’t kill the will within you
And it never shows
The place where evil grows

Evil grows in the dark
Where the sun it never shines
Evil grows in cracks and holes
And lives in people’s minds

Evil grew, it’s part of you
And now it seems to be
That every time I look at you
Evil grows in me

Where do the best ideas come from?

Even the oddest, weakest and daftest ideas can be made to seem excellent if well executed, so it is hard to classify a raw idea as “the best“, but if an idea turns out to be helpful and fruitful for you, you quite rightly want to have more of them.

Keep thinking about your writing throughout the day, even when you are doing something utterly unrelated.

Connections will form.

Thoughts will spark, triggering new ideas in a chain reaction that will provide the materials you need to complete your project.

Whether it is an initial idea for a book or one of the thousands of ideas needed to complete that work, keep thinking about your writing and the ideas will come.

Your notebook is a weapon for holding your free range thoughts.

Ideas are tricky little creatures.

There are always millions of them around – more than enough for all the writers that have ever been or ever will be.

The ideas that run through your head at all sorts of odd times can be speedy, fleeting, even ghostly creatures that are hard to catch, but if you make sure you have a notebook to hand at all times, you will stand a good chance of controlling them and developing them, so that these stray wild creatures become fully formed and wholly yours.

Think of ideas, elusive and slippery things that they are, not as thoughts but as opportunities.

If you don’t catch them as they pass, they will disappear.

Don’t trust that you will remember them or recapture the essence later, ou almost certainly won’t.

If you don’t write them down they will vanish, leaving just a sulphuric whiff of frustration and lost opportunity.

I am unwritten
Can’t read my mind
I’m undefined
I’m just beginning
The pen’s in my hand
Ending unplanned

Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find

Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
Release your inhibitions
Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten

Oh, oh, oh

I break tradition
Sometimes my tries are outside the lines
We’ve been conditioned to not make mistakes
But I can’t live that way

Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find

Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten

Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find

Oh, yeah, yeah

“Inspiration does exist, but it has to find you working.“

Pablo Picasso

Above: Spanish artist Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973)

Writing what you know is probably the single most common piece of advice handed out.

Draw up a list of all the jobs you have had.
Write down all the places you have been to in the last five years.
Write down all the places you have ever lived.
List all the people whom you have worked with.
Write down your hobbies and interests.
Write down the names, jobs or interests of all the people you know best.

You should by now have pages and pages of possible material.

Suddenly, there, in front of you, are tremendous possibilities for exciting writing that no one else can produce.

No one else has quite the collection of characters, settings, stories or experiences.

Make concrete the sheer wealth of material you have at your fingertips.

The essential thing is to be receptive to all the ideas that are out there.

For a writer, everything is material, to be processed, transformed, celebrated or examined.

Be open to taking inspiration from anywhere.

There are millions of stories, poems, plays, films and articles in circulation already, but none of them says what only you can say in the way that only you can say it.

Once you start to wander through the world – with your notebook in hand – looking at the world through writer’s eyes, you will see that almost everything can be minded for material.

“There are only a certain number of ideas in the world.

The good news is that no one knows just haw many that number is.

The bad news is that people have been mining the seam for a very long time.

To write a story, perhaps a novel, what you have to do is conjure a new variation on one of the ideas that has been around for hundreds, if not thousands, of years already.

Take comfort:

It is said that Shakespeare did not have an original idea for any of his plays, but whether he turned to the Romans, Greeks or English historians, he took that source material and with it he spun pure gold.”

(David Armstrong)

Above: English author William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616)

What were the most significant events of your childhood?

Do you find yourself drawing on them, directly or indirectly, in your writing?

Many writers do.

I’m writing ‘young and gifted‘ in my autobiography
I figure who would know better than me?
I’m certainly the former
But I’m not so much the latter
But no-one’s gonna read it
So I’m sure it doesn’t matter

When you find that you’re the former
Take pride in how you form
And when you find that you’re the latter
Don’t let those people walk under you

I’m writing ‘sharp and adult‘ with my finger on the steam
On the mirror in my bathroom
And I’m applying shaving cream
Which could suggest that I’m the foamer
But how can I be the lather?
And something tells me it’s the opposite I’d rather

When you find that you’re the foamer
Be careful what you foam
And when you find that you’re the lather
Don’t shave too high, you’ll regret it later

La la la la la
La la la la la la
La laaa laaaa la la la
La la la la

I stayed in school this long but still no one will tell me why
They figured ‘Who would know better than I?‘
I know I’m a conformer, but I’m sure it doesn’t matter
My new friends are all adults
And my old friends all have scattered

When you find that you’re a conformer
Take pride and swallow whole
But if you’re trying to climb the ladder
Don’t let people walk over you
Because that’s just what they’ll do
And don’t let people walk over you
Because that’s just what they’ll do

Willa Cather claimed:

“Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of 15.”

Above: American author Willa Cather (1873 – 1947)

F. Scott Fitzgerald gave it a bit longer:

“A writer can spin on about his adventures after 30, after 40, after 50, but the criteria by which these adventures are weighed and valued are irrevocably settled at the age of 25.”

Above: American author Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (1896 – 1940)

The theme of much of Fitzgerald’s work was rooted in his own youth:

“That was always my experience – a poor boy in a rich town, a poor boy in a rich boy’s school, a poor boy in a rich man’s club at Princeton.

However, I have never been able to forgive the rich for being rich.

It has coloured my entire life and works.”

Above: F. Scott Fitzgerald

This ambivalence is reflected in how the narrator of The Great Gatsby first describes Jay Gatsby:

“Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn.

If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that registers earthquakes 10,000 miles away.

Gatsby turned out all right at the end.

It is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.“

George Bernard Shaw supported the idea of writing about your own experience:

“The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.”

Above: Irish author George Bernard Shaw (1856 – 1950)

Eudora Welty reassures us that we don’t need to have had a particularly dramatic life in order to draw on it for inspiration:

“I am a writer who came out of a sheltered life.

For all serious daring starts from within.“

Above: American author Eudora Welty (1909 – 2001)

The memory need not be clear – in some cases, according to Josep Novakovich, it may be a memory that is just out of reach or mysterious in some way that has the most powerful effect:

“So, from my experience (no doubt it works differently for different people) – I think that an incomplete memory or the memory of an experience not fathomed, provides the strongest impetus to imagine, invent, mold, create.

It is the moments just missed that drive you crazy, crazy to live in an imaginary past.“

Above: Croatian-born Canadian author Josip Novakovich

Haruki Murakami points out:

“I think memory is the most important asset of human beings.

It is a kind of fuel.

It burns and it warms you.

My memory is like a chest.

There are so many drawers in that chest.

When I want to be a 15-year-old boy, I open up a certain drawer and I find the scenery I saw when I was a boy in Kobe.

I can smell the air.

I can touch the ground.

I can see the green of the trees.

That is why I want to write a book.”

Above: Japanese author Murakami Haruki (Japanese form of nomenclature)

It is well known that Charles Dickens’ childhood informed many of his books.

He had happy early years, but that period ended when his father was sent to debtor’s prison.

The rest of the family joined him there, except Charles, who boarded with a family friend and had to work 10-hour days pasting labels on shoe polish to pay for his board and help his family.

Above: English author Charles Dickens (1812 – 1870)

Although not all the specifics are the same, many elements of David Copperfield echo David’s experience.

Even though David never knew his father, who died before he was born, his early life is happy enough, but his mother marries a man who is cruel to him and then his mother and her new baby died.

This is how David Copperfield describes his feelings at being put to work washing and labelling bottles for many hours a day – which we can be sure was informed by Dicken’s memories of his own misery:

“No words can express the secret agony of my soul as I sunk into this companionship and felt my hopes of growing up to be a learned and distinguished man, crushed in my bosom.

The deep remembrance of the sense I had, of being utterly without hope now, of the shame I felt in my position, of the misery it was to my young heart to believe that day for day what I had learned and thought and delighted in and raised my fancy and emulation up by, would pass away from me, little by little, never to be brought back anymore, cannot be written.

I mingled my tears with the water in which I was washing the bottles and sobbed as if there a flow in my own breast and it were in danger of bursting.”

Sometimes memories can be used for a particular image.

On her website JK Rowling writes:

“I was a rotund baby.

The description in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone of the photographs of “what appeared to be a beach ball wearing different coloured bobble hats” would also apply to the pictures of my early years.“

Above: British author Joanne “J.K.” Rowling

Your goal in referring to your memories is not writing your autobiography, but rather mining your past for characters and events you can use as part of your fiction, especially those elements that carry an emotional weight and can inject your projects with their energy.

Ideas for novels and screenplays usually don’t pop into your mind full-blown, although there are some notable exceptions.

JK Rowling again:

“It was after a weekend’s flat-hunting, when I was travelling back to London on a crowded train, that the idea for Harry Potter simply fell into my head.

I had been writing almost continously since the age of six but I have never been so excited about an idea before.

To my immense frustration, I didn’t have a functioning pen with me and I was too shy to ask anybody if I could borrow one.

I think, now, that this was probably a good thing, because I simply sat and thought, for four delayed train hours.

All the details bubbled up in my brain and this scrawny black bespectacled boy who didn’t know he was a wizard became more and more real to me.“

Thus it was that, thanks partly to the ramshackle state of British Rail, that a billion-dollar enterprise was born in a period of four hours.

Sir John Clifford Mortimer (21 April 1923 – 2009) was a British barrister, dramatist, screenwriter and author.

Above: English barrister – author John Mortimer

He is best known for short stories about a barrister named Horace Rumpole, adapted from episodes of the TV series Rumpole of the Bailey also written by Mortimer.

Mortimer was born in Hampstead, London, the only child of Kathleen May (née Smith) and (Herbert) Clifford Mortimer (1884 – 1961), a divorce and probate barrister who became blind in 1936 when he hit his head on the door frame of a London taxi but still pursued his career.

Clifford’s loss of sight was not acknowledged openly by the family.

John Mortimer was educated at the Dragon School, Oxford, and Harrow School.

He first intended to be an actor (his lead role in the Dragon’s 1937 production of Richard II gained glowing reviews in The Draconian) and then a writer, but his father persuaded him against it, advising:

“My dear boy, have some consideration for your unfortunate wife.

The law gets you out of the house.“

With weak eyes and doubtful lungs, Mortimer was classified as medically unfit for military service in World War II.

He worked for the Crown Film Unit under Laurie Lee (1914 – 1997), writing scripts for propaganda documentaries.

I lived in London and went on journeys in blacked-out trains to factories and coal-mines and military and air force installations.

For the first and, in fact, the only time in my life I was, thanks to Laurie Lee, earning my living entirely as a writer.

If I have knocked the documentary ideal, I would not wish to sound ungrateful to the Crown Film Unit.

I was given great and welcome opportunities to write dialogue, construct scenes and try and turn ideas into some kind of visual drama.”

Above: English author Laurie Lee (1914 – 1997)

He based his first novel, Charade, on his experiences with the Crown Film Unit.

(It is June 1944 in an English seaside resort and a shy young man has just joined an army film unit making a documentary about army training.

While shooting a cliff-scaling exercise a sergeant plunges to his death.

It seems like an accident, but the shy young man is not convinced.)

Mortimer made his radio debut as a dramatist in 1955, adapting his own novel Like Men Betrayed for the BBC Light Programme.

(Christopher Kennet’s home and marriage have been comfortably stable for the past 25 years.

But when his estranged son Kit does something extraordinary with the property of a valued client, Christopher must leave his comfortable life behind, and enter his son’s dark, sinister world.)

His debut as an original playwright came with The Dock Brief (US title: Trial and Error) starring Michael Hordern as a hapless barrister, first broadcast in 1957 on BBC Radio.

(In a cell under the Old Bailey, two men meet.

One is Wilfred Morgenhall, a single barrister who never gets any cases and is overjoyed to have won this dock brief, the defence of an accused individual with no lawyer (at public expense).

The other is his client Herbert Fowle, an insignificant man who just wants to plead guilty to murdering his wife and get it all over.

Flashbacks show that the wife was impossible to live with and Fowle, who avoided her as much as possible, hatched a plot to get rid of her by taking in a male lodger.

The lodger found her amusing and attractive, until one day he went too far and Mrs Fowle threw him out of the house.

In despair at his plot having failed, Fowle killed her.

Morgenhall role plays various defences, in the process raising Fowle’s will to fight.

But when the case is called, he botches it and Fowle is found guilty.

Morgenhall goes to visit him in prison, where he learns that Fowle has been reprieved because his defence was so poor.

The two leave together, two lonely and inadequate men who have become friends.

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote:

“In its original form as a television play, John Mortimer’s little legal joke was something of a minor masterpiece.

Pierre Rouve’s adaptation has broadened and coarsened the original fabric and stretched it to take in flashback scenes which deaden by their explicitness where Mortimer was content to imply.

James Hill’s flat and literal style does nothing to offset the lack of imagination which is also apparent in Peter Sellers’ performance as Morgenhall.

He gives a brilliantly superficial sketch of a legal type, complete with resonant courtroom voice.

But he is altogether too smooth and glib for the seedy and defeated dreamer who fails his last chance so ludicrously.

Admittedly the balance between humour and compassion is difficult to strike, and Sellers is very funny, but his is a caricature rather than a characterisation.

Richard Attenborough makes a close shot at the dim little murderer, but his performance is not altogether free of a suspicion of patronage, and he is handicapped by a grotesque make-up.

In spite of its shortcomings, “The Dock Brief” remains a refreshingly original line in British comedy, and the quality of the dialogue shines like a good deed in a naughty world.“

The Guardian called it “excellent“.

The New York Times called it “a good second hand excursion into the realm of character comedy.”)

It later appeared in a double bill with What Shall We Tell Caroline? at the Lyric Hammersmith in April 1958.

(“What Shall We Tell Caroline?” is one of those allusive plays in which Mortimer is dealing with the ineffectualness of human beings in relationship to each other, with that troubling problem of communication.

A little song toward the end of the play with the line, to the effect that we are birds in the wilderness gives the clue to what the playwright is trying to say.

No one on the stage truly speaks to the others.

Arthur Loudon, a stodgy headmaster, is deeply in love with his wife, but finds it impossible to say so.

Instead of endearments he snorts and bellows in his conversations with her.

Tony Peters only pretends to be fond on Mrs. Loudon, yet, nevertheless, in feigning affection provides her with the tonic her husband cannot give.

None of the adults has any way of communicating with 18-year-old Caroline.

What shall they really tell her of life and human beings?

All this Mr. Mortimer wraps in a mixture of real and stream-of-consciousness dialogue.

Not all that is spoken between his characters is actually heard by them.

A good bit of it is interior reaction to situations.

The mixture is not always easy to fathom and one has to dig hard for meaning.

It is questionable whether the effort is worth the trouble.

Under Steve Chernak’s direction the performers are generally interesting to watch.

Mary Cooper, as Lily Loudon, does nicely with a wistful scene in which she attempts to describe to her daughter the meaning of being a woman.

Joseph Boley is properly blustery and tongue-tied as the schoolman. Anthony Dearden, as Tony Peters, is good-looking and gay as the make-believe wooer and Margot Welch is a poignant Caroline.)

Mortimer’s play A Voyage Round My Father, first broadcast on radio in 1963, is autobiographical, recounting his experiences as a young barrister and his relations with his blind father.

(Mortimer found inspiration in his own life for this portrait of a difficult but enduring love between father and son in mid 20th century Britain.

Screen legend Sir Laurence Olivier stars as the eccentric patriarch, a blind barrister so stubborn and cantankerous that he refuses to acknowledge his sightlessness.

Sir Alan Bates portrays his devoted son, who follows his father’s footsteps in the law while longing to become a writer, with Jane Asher as his wife.

Adapted for the screen by Mortimer and filmed largely on-location at his family estate in bucolic Oxfordshire, this production garnered multiple awards, including an International Emmy for best drama.

By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, it captures the special bond between father and son, which at times seems unbearable, but ultimately unbreakable.)

In 1965, he and his wife wrote the screenplay for the Otto Preminger film Bunny Lake is Missing, which also starred Olivier.

(American single mother Ann Lake, who recently moved to London from New York, arrives at the Little People’s Garden pre-school to collect her daughter, Bunny.

The child has mysteriously disappeared.

An administrator recalls meeting Ann but claims never to have seen the missing child.

Ann and her brother Steven search the school and find a peculiar old woman living upstairs, who claims she collects children’s nightmares.

In desperation, the Lakes call the police and Superintendent Newhouse arrives on the scene.

Everyone becomes a suspect and Superintendent Newhouse is steadfast, diligently following every lead.

The police and Newhouse decide to visit the Lakes’ new residence.

They conclude that all of Bunny’s possessions have been removed from the Lakes’ new home.

Ann cannot understand why anyone would do this and reacts emotionally.

Superintendent Newhouse begins to suspect that Bunny Lake does not exist, after he learns that “Bunny” was the name of Ann’s imaginary childhood friend.

Ann’s landlord, an aging actor, attempts to seduce her.

Steven argues with Newhouse, angrily tells him that he will hire a private detective to find Bunny, and storms off.

Newhouse decides to become better acquainted with Ann to learn more about Bunny.

He takes her to a local pub where he plies her with brandy and soda.

On her return home, Ann discovers she still has the claim ticket for Bunny’s doll, which was taken to a doll hospital for repairs.

Regarding the doll as proof of Bunny’s existence, she frantically rushes to the doll hospital late at night and retrieves the doll.

Steven arrives later and when Ann shows him the doll, Steven burns the doll, hoping to destroy it, then knocks Ann unconscious.

He takes Ann to a hospital and tells the desk nurse that Ann has been hallucinating about a missing girl who does not exist.

Ann is put under observation with instructions for her to be sedated if she awakes.

Ann wakes up in the hospital and escapes.

She discovers that Steven is burying Bunny’s possessions in the garden, and had sedated the little girl, hiding her in the trunk of his car.

Steven implies an incestuous interest with his sister, complaining that Bunny has always come between them.

Believing that Ann loves Bunny more than him, the child threatens Steven’s dream of a future with his sister.

Ann, realising her brother is insane, begins playing childhood games with Steven, in order to distract him from killing Bunny.

Newhouse, having discovered that Steven lied to the police about the name of the ship that brought the Lakes to England, rushes quickly to the Lakes’ residence, arriving in time to apprehend Steven, successfully rescuing Ann and Bunny.)

Mortimer was called to the Bar (Inner Temple) in 1948, at the age of 25.

His early career covered testamentary and divorce work, but on taking silk in 1966, he began to undertake criminal law.

Above: Grand Inner Temple, London, England

His highest profile came from cases relating to claims of obscenity, which, according to Mortimer, were “alleged to be testing the frontiers of tolerance“.

He has sometimes been cited wrongly as one of the Lady Chatterley’s Lover obscenity trial defence team.

He did, however, successfully defend publishers John Calder and Marion Boyars in a 1968 appeal against a conviction for publishing Hubert Selby Jr.’s Last Exit to Brooklyn.

He assumed a similar role three years later, this time unsuccessfully, for Richard Handyside, the English publisher of The Little Red Schoolbook.

In 1971, Mortimer managed to defend the editors of the satirical paper Oz against a charge of “conspiracy to corrupt and debauch the morals of the young of the Realm“, which might have carried a sentence of 12 years’ hard labour.

Above: OZ London, No.33, February 1971

In 1976, he defended Gay News editor Denis Lemon (Whitehouse v. Lemon) against charges of blasphemous libel for publishing James Kirkup’s The Love That Dares to Speak Its Name.

Lemon was given a suspended prison sentence, which was overturned on appeal.

Above: English writer James Kirkup (1918 – 2009)

He successfully defended Virgin Records in a 1977 obscenity hearing for using the word bollocks in the title of the Sex Pistols album Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols and the manager of the Nottingham branch of Virgin record shop chain for displaying and selling the record.

Mortimer retired from the bar in 1984.

Mortimer is best remembered for creating a barrister named Horace Rumpole, inspired by his father Clifford, whose speciality is defending those accused in London’s Old Bailey.

Mortimer created Rumpole for a BBC Play For Today in 1975.

Although not Mortimer’s first choice of actor – in an interview on the DVD set, he said he wanted Alistair Sim “but he turned out to be dead so he couldn’t take it on” – Australian-born Leo McKern played Rumpole with gusto and proved popular.

The idea was developed into a series, Rumpole of the Bailey, for Thames Television, in which McKern kept the lead role.

Mortimer also wrote a series of Rumpole books.

Mortimer also dramatised many real-life cases of the barrister Edward Marshall-Hall in a radio series with former Doctor Who star Tom Baker as protagonist.

Above: English barrister Edward Marshall-Hall (1858 – 1927)

In 1975 and 1976, Mortimer adapted eight of Graham Greene’s short stories for episodes of Shades of Greene presented by Thames Television.

Above: English author Graham Greene (1904 – 1991)

Mortimer was credited with writing the script for Granada Television’s 1981 serialization of Brideshead Revisited, based on the novel by Evelyn Waugh.

However, Graham Lord’s unofficial biography, John Mortimer: The Devil’s Advocate, revealed in 2005 that none of Mortimer’s submitted scripts had in fact been used and the screenplay was actually written by the series’ producer and director.

Mortimer adapted John Fowles’s The Ebony Tower starring Laurence Olivier for Granada in 1984.

Above: English author John Fowles (1926 – 2005)

In 1986, his adaptation of his own novel Paradise Postponed was televised.

He wrote the script, based on the autobiography of Franco Zeffirelli, for the 1999 film Tea with Mussolini, directed by Zeffirelli and starring Joan Plowright, Cher, Judi Dench, Maggie Smith and Lily Tomlin.

From 2004, Mortimer worked as a consultant for the politico-legal US “dramedy” television show Boston Legal.

Mortimer developed his career as a dramatist by rising early to write before attending court.

His work in total includes over 50 books, plays and scripts.

Besides 13 episodes of Rumpole dramatized for radio in 1980, several others of his works were broadcast on the BBC, including the true crime series John Mortimer Presents: The Trials Of Marshall Hall and Sensational British Trials.

Horace Rumpole has a number of definite character traits that are constant.

First and foremost, he loves the courtroom.

Despite attempts by his friends and family to get him to move on to a more respectable position for his age, such as a Queen’s Counsel (QC) or a Circuit Judge (positions Rumpole sarcastically calls “Queer Customers” and “Circus Judges“), he only enjoys defending his clients (who are often legal aid cases) at the Old Bailey, London’s Central Criminal Court:

“The honour of being an Old Bailey Hack“, as he describes his work.

Above: The Old Bailey, London, England

A devotee of Arthur Quiller-Couch’s Oxford Book of English Verse, he often quotes Wordsworth (and other poets less frequently, e.g. Shakespeare).

He privately calls his wife, Hilda, “She Who Must Be Obeyed“, a reference to the fearsome queen in H. Rider Haggard’s adventure novel She.

His skill at defending his clients is legendary among the criminal classes.

The Timson clan of “minor villains” (primarily thieves) regularly rely on Rumpole to get them out of their latest bit of trouble with the law.

Rumpole is proud of his successful handling of the Penge Bungalow Murders “alone and without a leader” (that is, as a “junior” barrister without a QC) early in his career and of his extensive knowledge of bloodstains and typewriters.

Above: Congregational Church, Penge, London Borough of Bromley

Cross-examination is one of his favourite activities.

He disdains barristers who lack either the skill or courage to ask the right questions.

His courtroom zeal gets him into trouble from time to time.

Often, his investigations reveal more than his client wants him to know.

Rumpole’s chanciest encounters stem from arguing with judges, particularly those who seem to believe that being on trial implies guilt or that the police are infallible.

Above: Leo Kern as Horace Rumpole

Rumpole enjoys smoking inexpensive cigars (cheroots), drinking cheap red wine and a diet of fried breakfasts, overboiled vegetables and steak and kidney pudding.

Above: Leo Kern as Horace Rumpole

Every day he visits “Pomeroy’s“, a wine bar on Fleet Street within walking distance of the Old Bailey and his chambers at Equity Court, at which he contributes regularly to an ever-increasing bar tab by purchasing glasses of red wine of questionable quality, which he calls variously “Cooking Claret“, “Pomeroy’s Plonk“, “Pomeroy’s Very Ordinary“, “Chateau Thames Embankment“, or “Chateau Fleet Street“.

His cigar smoking is often the subject of debate within his Chambers.

His peers sometimes criticise his attire, noting his old hat (a battered Homburg), imperfectly aligned clothes, cigar ash trailing down his waistcoat and faded barrister’s wig, “bought second hand from a former Chief Justice of Tonga“.

(Or the Windward Islands:

Rumpole is occasionally an unreliable narrator).

Despite his affection for the criminal classes, Rumpole has firm ethics.

He is a staunch believer in the presumption of innocence, the “Golden Thread of British Justice“.

He often reinforces this by proclaiming that it is better for 10 guilty men to go free than for one innocent to be convicted.

Accordingly, Rumpole’s credo is “I never plead guilty“, although he has qualified that credo by stating on several occasions that he is morally bound to enter a guilty plea if he knows for a fact that the defendant is guilty of the crime of which he/she is accused.

(In fact, he enters a plea of guilty on behalf of his clients in “Rumpole’s Last Case“.)

But if he has any doubt whatsoever about the facts surrounding the commission of the crime, even if the defendant has confessed to the deed (having stated, and proved, on one occasion that: “There is no piece of evidence more unreliable than a confession!“), Rumpole feels equally honour-bound to enter a plea of “not guilty” and offer the best defence possible.

His “never plead guilty” credo also prevents him from making deals that involve pleading guilty to lesser charges (again, with some exceptions – in “Rumpole and the Tap End” he persuades his client to plead guilty to assault in exchange for the dismissal of a charge of attempted murder).

Rumpole also refuses to prosecute, feeling it more important to defend the accused than to work to imprison them.

(There was one exception, when Rumpole took on a private prosecution, working for a private citizen rather than for the Crown, but he proved that the defendant was innocent and then reaffirmed: “From now on, Rumpole only defends.”)

Some of Rumpole’s clients feel that things would have been better for them if they had been found guilty and resent him for getting them off.

When I first began this post I thought I would focus on how Mortimer used his experience as the son of a barrister and as a barrister himself to create the persona of Horace Rumpole of the Bailey.

It has even inspired me with the notion of a collection of short stories based on my experiences as an ESL teacher in Türkiye.

But reading into the past of Mortimer as a barrister rather than as the creator of Rumpole of the Bailey, has led my thoughts to the cases he defended.

As aforementioned, his highest profile came from cases relating to claims of obscenity, which, according to Mortimer, were “alleged to be testing the frontiers of tolerance“.

He has sometimes been cited wrongly as one of the Lady Chatterley’s Lover obscenity trial defence team.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover is the last novel by English author D. H. Lawrence, which was first published privately in 1928, in Italy, and in 1929, in France.

Above: English author David Herbert “D.H.” Lawrence (1885 – 1930)

An unexpurgated edition was not published openly in the United Kingdom until 1960, when it was the subject of a watershed obscenity trial against the publisher Penguin Books, which won the case and quickly sold three million copies.

The book was also banned for obscenity in the United States, Canada, Australia, India and Japan.

The book soon became notorious for its story of the physical (and emotional) relationship between a working-class man and an upper-class woman, its explicit descriptions of sex and its use of then-unprintable profane words.

It entered the public domain in the United States in 2024.

The story concerns a young married woman, the former Constance Reid (Lady Chatterley), whose upper-class baronet husband, Sir Clifford Chatterley, described as a handsome, well-built man, is paralysed from the waist down because of a Great War injury.

Constance has an affair with the gamekeeper, Oliver Mellors.

The class difference between the couple highlights a major motif of the novel.

The central theme is Constance’s realisation that she cannot live with the mind alone.

That realization stems from a heightened sexual experience that Constance has felt only with Mellors, suggesting that love requires the elements of both body and mind.

Richard Hoggart argues that the main subject of Lady Chatterley’s Lover is not the explicit sexuality, which was the subject of much debate, but the search for integrity and wholeness.

Key to this integrity is cohesion between the mind and the body, for “body without mind is brutish, mind without body is a running away from our double being“.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover focuses on the incoherence of living a life that is “all mind“, which Lawrence found to be particularly true among the young members of the aristocratic classes, as in his description of Constance’s and her sister Hilda’s “tentative love affairs” in their youth:

“So they had given the gift of themselves, each to the youth with whom she had the most subtle and intimate arguments.

The arguments, the discussions were the great thing:

The love-making and connection were only sort of primitive reversion and a bit of an anti-climax.”

The contrast between mind and body can be seen in the dissatisfaction each character experiences in their previous relationships, such as Constance’s lack of intimacy with her husband, who is “all mind“, and Mellors’s choice to live apart from his wife because of her “brutish” sexual nature.

The dissatisfactions lead them into a relationship that develops very slowly and is based upon tenderness, physical passion, and mutual respect.

As the relationship between Lady Chatterley and Mellors builds, they learn more about the interrelation of the mind and the body.

She learns that sex is more than a shameful and disappointing act, and he learns about the spiritual challenges that come from physical love.

In November 1960, the full unexpurgated edition, the last of three versions written by Lawrence, was published by Penguin Books in Britain, selling its first print run of 200,000 copies on the first day of publication.

The trial of Penguin under the Obscene Publications Act 1959 was a major public event and a test of the new obscenity law.

The 1959 Act, introduced by Roy Jenkins, had made it possible for publishers to escape conviction if they could show that a work was of literary merit.

Above: British politician-writer Roy Jenkins (1920 – 2003)

One of the objections was to the frequent use of the word “f***” and its derivatives.

Another objection related to the use of the word “c***“.

Various academic critics and experts of diverse kinds, including E. M. Forster, Helen Gardner, Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams and Norman St John-Stevas, were called as witnesses.

Above: English author Edward Morgan “E.M.” Forster (1879 – 1970)

Above: English literary critic Helen Gardner (1908 – 1986)

Above: English academic Richard Hoggart (1918 – 2014)

Above: Welsh author Raymond Williams (1921 – 1988)

Above: British politician / barrister / author Norman St. John-Stevas (1920 – 2012)

The verdict, delivered on 2 November 1960, was “not guilty” and resulted in a far greater degree of freedom for publishing explicit material in the United Kingdom.

The prosecution was ridiculed for being out of touch with changing social norms when the chief prosecutor, Mervyn Griffith-Jones, asked if it was the kind of book “you would wish your wife or servants to read“.

Above: British barrister-judge Mervyn Griffith-Jones (1909 – 1979)

The Penguin second edition, published in 1961, contains a publisher’s dedication, which reads:

“For having published this book, Penguin Books was prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act, 1959 at the Old Bailey in London from 20 October to 2 November 1960.

This edition is therefore dedicated to the twelve jurors, three women and nine men, who returned a verdict of ‘not guilty’ and thus made D. H. Lawrence’s last novel available for the first time to the public in the United Kingdom“.

Jenny Turner maintained in The Sexual Imagination from Acker to Zola: A Feminist Companion (1993) that the publication of Lady Chatterley’s Lover broke “the taboo on explicit representations of sexual acts in British and North American literature“.

She described the novel as “a book of great libertarian energy and heteroerotic beauty“.

Prosecuting, Mervyn Griffith-Jones began by urging the jury to decide if the book was obscene under Section 2 of the Act and if so whether its literary merit provided for a ‘public good‘ under Section 4, and that they must judge the book as a whole.

Inviting them to consider as a test of whether it would deprave or corrupt he asked:

“Would you approve of your young sons, young daughters —because girls can read as well as boys — reading this book?

Is it a book you would have lying around your own house?

Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?”

This last question was the cause of some amusement in the court, and as a signal of how out of touch the Establishment were with everyday life, has echoed in popular culture since.

He also conceded that Lawrence was a writer of stature and that the book may have had some literary value but the obscenity of its language, its recommendation of what appears to be adulterous promiscuity and that the plot is mere padding for descriptions of sexual intercourse outweighed any such defence.

Gerald Gardiner outlined the case for the defence:

That the book was not obscene under Section 2 as it would not deprave or corrupt anyone, and that due to Lawrence’s status the work satisfied Section 4.

That “Lawrence’s message, as you have heard, was that the society of his day in England was sick, he thought, and the sickness from which it was suffering was the result of the machine age, the ‘b****-goddess Success’, the importance that everybody attached to money, and the degree to which the mind had been stressed at the expense of the body and that what we ought to do was to re-establish personal relationships, the greatest of which was the relationship between a man and a woman in love, in which there was no shame and nothing wrong, nothing unclean, nothing which anybody was not entitled to discuss.“

Therefore, the descriptions of sex were necessary and appropriate.

The defence then called 35 witnesses to testify to the artistic, sociological and moral value of the book.

Above: Baron Gerald Gardiner (1900 – 1990)

The defence called John Robinson, the Bishop of Woolwich, to elicit “What, if any, are the ethical merits of this book?“

After objection from the prosecution on the relevance of this testimony the judge agreed it satisfied the “other objects” criterion of Subsection 2 Section 4 of the Act.

Robinson said that while Lawrence’s view was not Christian his intention “is to portray the sex relationship as something essentially sacred“.

He continued “as in a real sense a holy communion.

For him flesh was completely sacramental of spirit.

His descriptions of sexual relations cannot be taken out of the context of his whole, to me, quite astonishing sensitivity to the beauty and value of all organic relationships.“

Pressed by Griffith-Jones on whether the book had any instructional value, Robinson admitted it did not but, asked by Gardiner if it were a book Christians ought to view, Robinson said “yes“, over the objection of the prosecution that it was for the jury to decide if its publication was justified.

Nevertheless, Robinson’s statement led to the newspaper headline “A Book All Christians Should Read“.

Above: Bishop John Robinson (1919 – 1983)

In testimony that was later seen to have had a deciding influence on the trial the sociologist and lecturer in English Literature Richard Hoggart was called to testify to the literary value of Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

In a detailed textual analysis of the book under defence examination, Hoggart was asked about the purpose of the obscene words in the book: “the first effect, when I first read it was some shock, because they don’t go into polite literature normally.

Then as one read further on one found the words lost that shock.

They were being progressively purified as they were used.

We have no word in English for this act which is not either a long abstraction or an evasive euphemism, and we are constantly running away from it, or dissolving into dots, at a passage like that.

He wanted to say:

‘This is what one does.

In a simple, ordinary way, one f****,’ with no sniggering or dirt.“

Cross-examining for the prosecution, Griffith-Jones pursued Hoggart’s previous description of the book as “highly virtuous if not puritanical“.

“I thought I had lived my life under a misapprehension as to the meaning of the word ‘puritanical’.

Will you please help me?”

“Yes, many people do live their lives under a misapprehension of the meaning of the word ‘puritanical’.

This is the way in which language decays.

In England today and for a long time the word ‘puritanical’ has been extended to mean somebody who is against anything which is pleasurable, particularly sex.

The proper meaning of it, to a literary man or to a linguist, is somebody who belongs to the tradition of British Puritanism generally, and the distinguishing feature of that is an intense sense of responsibility for one’s conscience.

In this sense the book is puritanical.”

Above: Scottish actor David Tennant as Richard Hoggart (The Chatterley Affair)

During examination of James Hemming the question was submitted by Gardiner whether reference to other books was permissible as evidence with respect to the author’s intention and particularly the production of other books to show by way of comparison what the climate of literature was and how well the authorial intention was carried out.

Above: British psychologist James Hemming (1909 – 2007)

Further, that the 1959 Act had changed the law regarding judging the work as a whole and whether the Act required proof of criminal intent.

Gardiner’s contention was that intent to deprave and corrupt was a rebuttable one and hence evidence can be called to prove there was no intent to deprave.

In reply, Griffith-Jones cited R v Montalk 1932 that “the offence of uttering and publishing an obscene libel is established as soon as the Prosecution has proved the publication and obscenity of the matter charged, and a jury should not be directed that, beyond this, they must find an intent to corrupt public morals.”

Gardiner countered that while he accepted the prosecution’s argument in R v Montalk that intent to corrupt public morals is inferred from the act of publication, that presumption is itself a matter of fact and rebuttable.

The judge gave his opinion that the defence was not justified in calling evidence to prove that there was no intent to deprave and corrupt, that defence could not produce other books with respect to evidence of the present book’s obscenity rather than literary merit and that expert testimony could not be called as to the public good of the work which was a matter for the jury.

In a lengthy speech, which has been praised for its ‘forensic advocacy‘, Gardiner began by recapitulating the testimony of the defence witnesses, after which he went on to examine the tactics of the prosecution:

“In answer to what these witnesses have said, hardly any question has been put to them by the prosecution about the book as a whole.

The technique has been just as it used to be before the Act:

To read out particular passages and say “Now do you call that moral?“, or “Do you think that is a good bit of writing?”

The one thing which this Act has made plain is that in future, in fairness to the author, the book must be judged as a whole.”

In reference to the desirability of publication Gardiner invited the jury to consider that:

“In my submission to you the defendants have shown, on the balance of probabilities, that it would be for the public good that this book should be generally available.

I say on the balance of probabilities because where the prosecution has to establish something in a criminal case the burden which rests on them is to satisfy a jury beyond a reasonable doubt.

Where the defence have to discharge some burden of proof it is a lesser burden, it is the burden of satisfying a jury on a mere balance of probabilities.”

And in referring to the judge’s ruling on the admissibility of other books for comparison Gardiner simply entreated the jury:

“All you can do is to judge it as a whole in the existing climate of literature and with your own knowledge of human life.“

In his closing remarks Griffith-Jones examined the definition of obscenity and the change of its wording in law:

“It is true that the old definition is now altered, and the words ‘those whose minds are open to such influences’, are changed to ‘those who may in all the circumstances read the book’.

You may think that place rather a less burden upon the prosecution than hitherto, that it rather widens the scope of this Act than otherwise, for now, irrespective of whether the person reading the book is one of a rather dull or perhaps retarded or stupid intellect, one whose mind may be open to such influences, there is not any such restricted class.

It is anyone who may read the book in all the circumstances.”

With respect to the moral character of the book he observed:

“It is said that this book condemns promiscuity.

Does it?

But it does condone promiscuity, doesn’t it?

The earlier sexual experiences of both parties, then Michaelis, then Mellors – it is said that this is only showing how perfect sexual intercourse can lead to ultimate happiness.

Members of the jury, the short answer to that view of the matter is this, which I think I put to one witness:

What is there in the book to suggest that if the sexual intercourse between Lady Chatterley and Mellors had not eventually turned out to be successful she would not have gone on and on and on elsewhere until she did find it?”

In a point not raised in cross-examination Griffith-Jones asked the jury to consider the passage of the novel on page 258 which suggested heterosexual anal sex, then a criminal act in England and Wales, which (though Griffith-Jones didn’t belabour the point), had it been examined more closely, might have been damning to the defence case that the book was not obscene.

After three hours of deliberation the jury returned a unanimous verdict of not guilty.

As aforementioned, Mortimer has sometimes been cited wrongly as one of the Lady Chatterley’s Lover obscenity trial defence team, because his highest profile came from cases relating to claims of obscenity.

Last Exit to Brooklyn is a 1964 novel by American author Hubert Selby Jr.

The novel takes a harsh, uncompromising look at lower class Brooklyn in the 1950s written in a brusque, everyman style of prose.

Critics and fellow writers praised the book on its release.

Due to its frank portrayals of taboo subjects, such as drug use, street violence, gang rape, homophobia, prostitution and domestic violence it was the subject of an obscenity trial in the United Kingdom and was banned in Italy.

The stories are set almost entirely in what is now considered the Sunset Park section of Brooklyn; the location is widely misreported as Red Hook, where one story is set and parts of the 1989 movie were filmed.

Last Exit to Brooklyn is divided into six parts that can, more or less, be read separately.

Each part is prefaced with a passage from the Bible.

Another Day, Another Dollar:

A gang of young Brooklyn hoodlums hang around an all-night diner and get into a vicious fight with a group of Army soldiers on leave.

The Queen Is Dead:

Georgette, a sassy transgender prostitute, is thrown out of the family home by her homophobic brother and tries to attract the attention of a ruthless hoodlum named Vinnie at a benzedrine-driven party. Georgette dies of a drug overdose after the party.

And Baby Makes Three:

A story told by an unknown narrator about a couple, Suzy and Tommy, who have a baby out of wedlock, and their wedding, and baby’s christening party is quickly thrown by Suzy’s parents.

Tralala:

The title character of an earlier Selby short story, she is a young Brooklyn prostitute who makes a living propositioning sailors in bars and stealing their money.

In perhaps the novel’s most notorious scene, she is brutally gang-raped after a night of heavy drinking.

She is left for dead in a vacant lot.

Strike:

Harry, a machinist in a factory, becomes a local official in the union.

He is a closeted gay man, he abuses his wife, and he tries to boast of his accomplishments and his high status to anyone who might listen to convince himself that he is a man.

He gains a temporary status and importance during a long strike, and uses the union’s money to entertain the young street punks and buy the company of drag queens and gay men.

He is ultimately beaten viciously by the hoodlums from the opening chapter, after he forcibly fellates a 10-year-old boy.

Landsend:

Described as a “coda” for the book, this section presents the intertwined, yet ordinary day of numerous denizens in a housing project.

The rights for the British edition were acquired by Marion Boyars and John Calder and the novel ended up in the hands of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

The manuscript was published in January 1966, received positive reviews and sold almost 14,000 copies.

The director of Blackwell’s bookshop in Oxford complained to the DPP about the detailed depictions of brutality and cruelty in the book but the DPP did not pursue the allegations.

Sir Cyril Black, the then-Conservative Member of Parliament for Wimbledon, initiated a private prosecution of the novel before Marlborough Street Magistrates’ Court, under Judge Leo Gradwell.

The public prosecutor brought an action under Section 3 of the Obscene Publications Act.

During the hearing the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate ordered that all copies of the book within the jurisdiction of the magistrates’ court be seized.

Not a single bookseller possessed a copy, but the publishing offices of Calder and Boyars, within the Bow Street Magistrate’s jurisdiction, were discovered to be in possession of three copies.

The books were duly seized.

Boyars was summoned to show cause why they should not be forfeited.

Expert witnesses spoke, “unprecedentedly” for the prosecution:

They included the publishers Sir Basil Blackwell and Robert Maxwell.

On the defense side were the scholars Al Alvarez II, and Professor Frank Kermode, who had previously compared the work to Charles Dickens.

Others who provided rebuttal evidence included H. Montgomery Hyde.

The order had no effect beyond the borders of the Marlborough Street Court, the London neighborhood of Soho.

At the hearing Calder declared that the book would continue to be published and would be sold everywhere else outside of that jurisdiction.

In response the prosecutor brought criminal charges under Section 2 of the Act, which entitled the defendants to trial by jury under Section 4.

The jury was all male.

Judge Graham Rogers directed that the women “might be embarrassed at having to read a book which dealt with homosexuality, prostitution, drug-taking and sexual perversion.”

The trial lasted nine days.

On 23 November, the jury returned a guilty verdict.

In 1968, an appeal issued by lawyer and writer John Mortimer resulted in a judgment by Justice Geoffrey Lane that reversed the ruling.

The case marked a turning point in British censorship laws.

By that time, the novel had sold over 33,000 hardback and 500,000 paperback copies in the United States.

Mortimer assumed a similar role three years later, this time unsuccessfully, for Richard Handyside, the English publisher of The Little Red Schoolbook.

The Little Red Schoolbook (Danish: Den Lille Røde Bog For Skoleelever) is a book written by two Danish schoolteachers, Søren Hansen and Jesper Jensen, first published in 1969.

It was subject to much controversy upon its publication and was translated into many languages in the early 1970s.

The book encourages young people to question societal norms and instructs them on how to do this.

Out of 200 pages, it includes 20 pages on sex and 30 on drugs, including alcohol and tobacco.

Other topics included adults as “paper tigers“, the duties of teachers, discipline, examinations, intelligence, and different schools.

(“Paper tiger” is a calque (a word borrowed from another language) of the Chinese phrase zhǐlǎohǔ.

The term refers to something or someone that claims or appears to be powerful or threatening, but is actually ineffectual and unable to withstand challenge.

Mao Zedong first introduced his idea of paper tigers to Americans in an August 1946 interview with American journalist Anna Louise Strong:

“The atom bomb is a paper tiger which the US reactionaries use to scare people.

It looks terrible, but in fact it isn’t.

Of course, the atom bomb is a weapon of mass slaughter, but the outcome of a war is decided by the people, not by one or two new types of weapon.

All reactionaries are paper tigers.

In appearance, the reactionaries are terrifying, but in reality they are not so powerful.“

In this view, “paper tigers” are superficially powerful but are prone to overextension that leads to sudden collapse.

Above: Chinese Chairman Mao Zedong (1893 – 1976)

The term was frequently used in Chinese Internet discourse regarding the trade war begun by US President Donald Trump.

Internet users referred to Trump as a paper tiger, frequently observing that the US economy depends heavily on Chinese companies for a host of necessities, electronics, and raw components.

Above: Donald Trump

In The Resistance to Theory (1982), Paul de Man used the phrase to reflect upon the threat of literary theory to traditional literary scholarship in American academia.

He said:

“If a cat is called a tiger it can easily be dismissed as a paper tiger.

The question remains however why one was so scared of the cat in the first place.”

The phrase was used in a 2006 speech by then-Senator Joe Biden to describe North Korea after a series of missile launches from the country that same year, defying the warnings of the international community while still incapable of directly harming the United States.

Above: US President Joe Biden

China itself has been called a paper tiger.

In 2021, Michael Beckley argued in his book Unrivaled: Why America Will Remain the World’s Sole Superpower that China would not be able to overtake the United States, and that believing China is stronger than it really is, is detrimental to American perceptions and policy.

According to Beckley, this is because:

“China’s economic, financial, technological, and military strength is hugely exaggerated by crude and inaccurate statistics.”:

For example, Beckley states that high-scoring Chinese education statistics are actually cherry-picked, that the People’s Liberation Army is not as strong as the United States Armed Forces due to their differing focuses, and that China’s large GDP does not equate to their actual strength or power.

Following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Russian Armed Forces was described by many commentators as a paper tiger.

Steve Day, a retired Canadian Armed Forces Joint Task Force 2 commander, described Russian command and control as a “bit more of a paper tiger” than previously thought as it was “utterly inept” and suggested that the Russian military “may not be as invincible as we’ve believed for a number of decades“.

The New Yorker described Russia as a paper tiger and analysed their performance during the 2008 Russo-Georgian War.

The paper said that the Russian military suffered from:

“disunity of command
logistical weaknesses
poorly trained, poorly motivated, poorly led troops
very poor quality of officer corps
very poor quality of campaign design and ability to plan
very poor integration within and among the armed services, including the synchronization of air and ground operations“. )

As a result of The Little Red Schoolbook‘s subject matter and its targeted audience of schoolchildren, politicians in many countries criticised the book, fearing it would erode the moral fabric of society and be an invitation for anarchy in schools.

The LRSB was banned in France and Italy.

In Switzerland, the Bernese cantonal politician Hans Martin Sutermeister led a campaign against the book.

He was initially successful in temporarily blocking the introduction of the book into the country.

The subsequent controversy, however, ended his political career, costing him his job as director of the schools of the Swiss capital and contributed to a split in his party, the Ring of Independents, which led to its mid-term decline.

Above: Swiss politician Hans Martin Sutermeister (1907 – 1977)

The book was banned in the Australian state of Queensland by the Queensland Literature Board of Review in 1972.

Beatrice Faust contributed to the Australian edition of The Little Red Schoolbook.

Above: Flag of the Australian state of Queensland

It was not banned in New Zealand despite some “moral outrage“.

Above: Flag of New Zealand

The book was translated into English by Berit Moore, a Norwegian living in England in 1970.

The English edition was first distributed in Ireland by Filmbank Publications, Dublin during April 1972.

It was available until the Censorship Publications Board banned it on 28 April 1972.

In the UK, Christian morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse pressed for the book to be prosecuted in a letter to the Director of Public Prosecutions, although action was already being taken.

She was quoted in a Daily Telegraph article published on 29 March 1971 asserting the book “had caused ‘incalculable harm’ to children” in Denmark“.

It “normalises the most licentious behaviour“, she believed.

Above: British teacher – activist Mary Whitehouse (1910 – 2001)

Ross McWhirter, in a letter to The Guardian, thought “the real issue” about the book was its seditious nature.

Above: Guinness Book of World Records co-founder Ross McWhirter (1925 – 1975)

The offices of the book’s British publisher, Richard Handyside, were raided by the police and the eventual prosecution under the Obscene Publications Act was successful.

Headmistress Elizabeth Manners, a witness for the prosecution at the trial, said:

“It is not true to say that masturbation for girls is harmless, since a girl who has become accustomed to the shallow satisfactions of masturbation may find it very difficult to adjust to complete intercourse.

This should be checked, but I believe it to be a fact.”

The court’s decision was upheld on appeal on the basis that Handyside had not shown the public interest was served by issuing the book.

It reached the European Court of Human Rights in the case known as Handyside v United Kingdom.

The government however allowed a second, censored edition to be published, in which some of the passages criticised in court were amended or cut.

It was the subject of a BBC Radio 4 documentary in 2008 presented and produced by Jolyon Jenkins.

It was also discussed critically by Peter Hitchens in his 2009 book The Broken Compass: How British Politics Lost its Way.

An unexpurgated edition of the book, bar one minor cut, was published in the UK in July 2014.

Oz was an independently published, alternative / underground magazine associated with the international counterculture of the 1960s.

While it was first published in Sydney in 1963, a parallel version of Oz was published in London from 1967.

The Australian magazine was published until 1969 and the British version until 1973.

The central editor, throughout the magazine’s life in both countries, was Richard Neville.

In both Australia and the UK, the creators of Oz were prosecuted on charges of obscenity.

A 1963 charge was dealt with expeditiously when, upon the advice of a solicitor, the three editors pleaded guilty.

In two later trials, one in Australia in 1964 and the other in the UK in 1971, the magazine’s editors were acquitted on appeal, after initially being found guilty and sentenced to harsh jail terms.

The 16-page first issue, published on April Fools’ Day 1963, caused a sensation, selling 6,000 copies by lunchtime of publication day.

It parodied the Sydney Morning Herald (and was even printed on The Herald‘s own presses, adding to its credibility) and led with a front-page hoax about the collapse of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

It also featured a centre spread on the history of the chastity belt and a story on abortion – based on Neville’s own experience of arranging a termination of pregnancy for a girlfriend.

Abortion was then still illegal in New South Wales.

These stories though, would soon lead to the magazine’s first round of obscenity charges, but there were also more immediate consequences.

As a result of the controversy generated by the abortion story, the Sydney Daily Mirror cancelled its advertising contract, it also threatened to sack Peter Grose from his cadetship unless he resigned from Oz and the Maritime Services Board evicted Oz from its office in The Rocks.

In succeeding issues (and in its later London version) Oz gave pioneering coverage to contentious issues such as censorship, homosexuality, police brutality, the Australian government’s White Australia policy and Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War, as well as regularly satirising public figures, up to and including Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies.

In mid-1963, shortly after the publication of issue No.3, Neville, Walsh and Grose were summoned on charges of distributing an obscene publication.

The shock of the charges caused Walsh’s deeply religious father to suffer a serious heart attack, so their family solicitor arranged for the case to be adjourned until September 1963 but he advised the trio that, as first offenders, they could avoid having their conviction recorded if they pleaded guilty.

With end-of-year exams looming, Oz issue No.5 was postponed until the Christmas break.

When eventually issued, it included a scathing satire on the ongoing police harassment of gay people.

“The Stiff Arm of the Law” (which became a regular feature on police misconduct) featured a parody of a police report in which incriminating sections of a supposed account of an officer’s real actions in a gay-bashing incident were crossed out and replaced with far more anodyne language, e.g. in the line “I was at Phillip Street Station in my homo hunting togs“, the words “homo hunting togs” were crossed out and replaced with the handwritten words “plain clothes“, “this little bastard” with “a youth“, and “I myself punched him several times” was amended to read “I was punched several times”, and so on.

As a result of this perceived slight to their integrity, police seized 140 copies of Oz from a Kings Cross, NSW newsagent and took them to a magistrate, who ordered them to be burned.

Two other items in these early issues incurred the wrath of the NSW police.

One was Martin Sharp’s ribald satirical poem about youths gatecrashing a party, entitled “The Word Flashed Around The Arms“.

The other was the Oz No.6 cover photograph, which depicted Neville and others pretending to urinate into a wall fountain created by sculptor Tom Bass, which was mounted in the street facade of the Sydney offices of the P&O shipping line and which had recently been unveiled by Prime Minister Menzies.

In April 1964 Neville, Walsh and Sharp were again charged with obscenity, but the situation was greatly complicated by the fact that they had already pleaded guilty in their first trial, and this previous conviction would count heavily against them in sentencing if they were found guilty on the new charges.

As soon as the case began they were confronted by the blatant bias and hostility of the magistrate hearing the case, Gerald Locke.

To the dismay of the Oz team and their friends and family, Locke decided to make an example of them, sentencing them to three to six months in prison with hard labour, but they were released on bail pending an appeal.

Their supporters decided to raise money for the defence fund with a benefit concert.

The case created a storm of controversy, but the convictions were overturned on appeal mainly because – as in their subsequent British trial – the appeal judge found that Locke had misdirected the jury and made remarks that were found to have been prejudicial to the defence’s case.

In subsequent issues Oz made several investigations into the murky realms of Sydney’s underworld.

One celebrated feature delved into the illegal abortion rackets which were then flourishing in Sydney (and around Australia), because at that time abortion was still illegal for all but the most exceptional cases, and corrupt police were widely believed to be running lucrative protection rackets that netted them substantial sums.

In 1965, Oz editor Richard Neville had a close encounter with Sydney’s alleged “Mr Big” of organised crime, Lenny McPherson, a notorious criminal who was at that time well on his way to becoming Sydney’s most powerful underworld figure, thanks in part to a systematic program of public assassinations of his rivals.

Late in the year, Oz published a feature called “The Oz Guide to Sydney’s Underworld“, which was based on information from two local journalists, and which included a “top 20” list of Sydney major criminals.

The list deliberately left the number 1 spot blank, but at number 2 was the name “Len” (i.e. McPherson) who was described as a “fence” and a “fizz-gig” (police informant).

Soon after the list was published, McPherson made a visit to Neville’s house in Paddington, NSW.

Ostensibly he wanted to find out whether the Oz editors were part of a rival gang, but he also made it clear to Neville that he objected to being described as a “fizz“.

The Top 20 list also reportedly played a part in the death of Sydney criminal Jacky Steele, who was shot in Woollahra in November 1965.

Steele – who had been trying to take over protection rackets controlled by McPherson – survived for almost a month before dying from his wounds, but before he died he told police that McPherson had ordered his execution because Steele had bought multiple copies of Oz and had made great play of the fact that McPherson was not number 1.

Oz revealed this in a subsequent issue, which contained extracts from the minutes of a confidential meeting of Sydney detectives, held on 1 December 1965, which had been leaked to the magazine by an underworld source.

Sharp and Neville left for London in February 1966, while Walsh returned to his studies.

He continued to publish a reduced edition of Sydney Oz, which ran until 1969 and included material submitted by Neville and Sharp from London.

In early 1966 Neville and Sharp travelled to the UK and in early 1967, with fellow Australian Jim Anderson, they founded the London Oz.

With access to new print stocks, including metallic foils, new fluorescent inks and the freedom of layout offered by the offset printing system, Sharp’s artistic skills came to the fore and Oz quickly won renown as one of the most visually exciting publications of its day.

Several editions of Oz included dazzling psychedelic wrap-around or pull-out posters by Sharp, London design duo Hapshash and the Coloured Coat and others.

These instantly became sought-after collectors’ items and now command high prices.

Another innovation was the cover of Oz No.11, which included a collection of detachable adhesive labels, printed in either red, yellow or green.

The all-graphic “Magic Theatre” edition (Oz No.16, November 1968), overseen by Sharp and Mora, has been described by British author Jonathon Green as “arguably the greatest achievement of the entire British underground press“.

During this period Sharp also created the two famous psychedelic album covers for the group Cream, Disraeli Gears and Wheels of Fire.

Sharp’s involvement gradually decreased by 1969.

The “Magic Theatre” edition was one of his last major contributions to the magazine.

In his place, young Londoner Felix Dennis, who had been selling issues on the street, was eventually brought in as Neville and Anderson’s new partner.

The magazine regularly enraged the British Establishment with a range of left-field stories including heavy critical coverage of the Vietnam War and the anti-war movement, discussions of drugs, sex and alternative lifestyles, and contentious political stories, such as the magazine’s revelations about the torture of citizens under the rule of the military junta in Greece.

In 1970, reacting to criticism that Oz had lost touch with youth, the editors put a notice in the magazine inviting “school kids” to edit an issue.

The opportunity was taken up by around 20 secondary school students, who were responsible for Oz No.28 (May 1970), generally known as “Schoolkids Oz“.

This term was widely misunderstood to mean that it was intended for schoolchildren, whereas it was an issue that had been created by them.

As Richard Neville said in his opening statement, other issues had been assembled by gay people and members of the Female Liberation Movement.

One of the resulting articles was a highly sexualised Rupert Bear parody.

It was created by 15-year-old schoolboy Vivian Berger by pasting the head of Rupert onto the lead character of an X-rated satirical cartoon by Robert Crumb.

Oz was one of several ‘underground‘ publications targeted by the Obscene Publications Squad, and their offices had already been raided on several occasions, but the conjunction of schoolchildren and what some viewed as obscene material set the scene for the Oz obscenity trial of 1971.

In one key respect it was a virtual re-run of the second Australian trial – the judicial instruction was clearly aimed at securing a conviction, and like Gerald Locke in Sydney, the judge hearing the London case, Judge Michael Argyle, exhibited signs of bias against the defendants.

However the British trial was given a far more dangerous edge because the prosecution employed an archaic charge against Neville, Dennis and Anderson — “conspiracy to corrupt public morals“—which, in theory, carried a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

After being turned down by several leading lawyers, Dennis and Anderson secured the services of barrister and writer John Mortimer, who was assisted by his Australian-born junior counsel Geoffrey Robertson.

Neville chose to represent himself.

At the opening of the trial in June 1971 Mortimer stated that:

“The case stands at the crossroads of our liberty, at the boundaries of our freedom to think and draw and write what we please“.

For the defence, this specifically concerned the treatment of dissent and dissenters, about the control of ideas and suppressing the messages of social resistance communicated by Oz in issue No.28.

The charges read out in the central criminal court stated “that the defendants conspiring with certain other young persons to produce a magazine containing obscene, lewd, indecent and sexually perverted articles, cartoons and drawings with intent to debauch and corrupt the morals of children and other young persons and to arouse and implant in their minds lustful and perverted ideas“.

According to Brian Leary, prosecuting:

“It dealt with homosexuality, lesbianism, sadism, perverted sexual practices and drug taking.”

John Lennon and Yoko Ono joined the protest march against the prosecution and organised the recording of “God Save Us” by the ad hoc group Elastic Oz Band to raise funds and gain publicity.

Lennon explained how the song title changed from “God Save Oz” to “God Save Us“.

The trial was, at the time, the longest obscenity trial in British legal history, and it was the first time that an obscenity charge was combined with the charge of conspiring to corrupt public morals.

Defence witnesses included artist Feliks Topolski, comedian Marty Feldman, artist and drugs activist Caroline Coon, DJ John Peel, musician and writer George Melly, legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin and academic Edward de Bono.

Above: Polish painter Feliks Topolski (1907 – 1989)

Above: British comedian Marty Feldman (1934 – 1982)

Above: English artist Caroline Coon

Above: English disc jockey John Peel (1939 – 2004)

Above: English artist George Melly (1926 – 2007)

Above: American legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin (1931 – 2013)

Above: Maltese physician Edward de Bono (1933 – 2012)

At the conclusion of the trial the “Oz Three” were found not guilty on the conspiracy charge, but they were convicted of two lesser offences and sentenced to imprisonment, although Dennis was given a lesser sentence because the judge, Michael Argyle, considered that Dennis was “very much less intelligent” than the others.

Shortly after the verdicts were handed down, they were taken to prison and their long hair forcibly cut, an act which caused an even greater stir on top of the already considerable outcry surrounding the trial and verdict.

The best known images of the trial come from the committal hearing, at which Neville, Dennis and Anderson all appeared, wearing rented schoolgirl costumes.

At the appeal trial (where the defendants appeared wearing long wigs) it was found that Judge Argyle had grossly misdirected the jury on numerous occasions and the defence also alleged that Berger, who was called as a prosecution witness, had been harassed and assaulted by police.

The convictions were overturned.

Years later, Felix Dennis told author Jonathon Green that on the night before the appeal was heard, the Oz editors were taken to a secret meeting with the Chief Justice, Lord Widgery, who reportedly said that Argyle had made a “fat mess” of the trial, and informed them that they would be acquitted, but insisted that they had to agree to give up work on Oz.

Dennis also stated that, in his opinion, MPs Tony Benn and Michael Foot had interceded with Widgery on their behalf.

Despite their supposed undertaking to Lord Widgery, Oz continued after the trial, and thanks to the intense public interest the trial generated, its circulation briefly rose to 80,000.

However its popularity faded over the next two years and by the time the last issue (Oz No.48) was published in November 1973 Oz Publications was £20,000 in debt and the magazine had “no readership worth the name“.

Whitehouse v Lemon is a 1977 court case involving the blasphemy law in the United Kingdom.

It was the last successful blasphemy trial in the UK.

“The Love That Dares to Speak Its Name” is a poem by James Kirkup.

It is written from the viewpoint of a Roman centurion who describes having sex with Jesus after his Crucifixion, and also says that Jesus had had sex with other men including disciples, guards, and Pontius Pilate.

The poem itself was considered of low artistic value, both by critics and the author himself.

In 1976 the poem was published in Gay News, with an accompanying illustration.

In early November 1976, Mary Whitehouse obtained a copy of the poem and announced her intention to bring a private prosecution against the magazine.

Leave to bring this prosecution was granted on 9 December 1976.

The charges named Gay News Ltd and Denis Lemon as the publishers.

A charge against Moore Harness Ltd for distributing was subsequently dropped.

The indictment described the offending publication as “a blasphemous libel concerning the Christian religion, namely an obscene poem and illustration vilifying Christ in his life and in his Crucifixion“.

The Gay News Fighting Fund was set up in December 1976.

Judge Alan King-Hamilton heard the trial at the Old Bailey on 4 July 1977, with John Mortimer and Geoffrey Robertson representing the accused and John Smyth representing Mary Whitehouse.

On Monday 11 July, the jury found both defendants guilty.

Gay News Ltd was fined £1,000.

Denis Lemon was fined £500 and sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment suspended.

It had been “touch and go“, said the judge, whether he would actually send Denis Lemon to jail.

Mary Whitehouse’s costs of £7,763 were ordered to be paid 4/5 four-by Gay News Ltd and 1/5 by Lemon.

Gay News Ltd and Denis Lemon appealed against conviction and sentence.

On 17 March 1978, the Court of Appeal quashed Denis Lemon’s suspended prison sentence but upheld the convictions on the basis that the law of blasphemy had been developed before mens rea, literally, a “guilty mind“, became an essential element of a crime.

Gay News readers voted by a majority of 20 to 1 in favour of appealing to the House of Lords.

The Law Lords heard the appeal against conviction and delivered their judgment on 21 February 1979.

At issue was whether or not the offence of blasphemous libel required specific intent of committing such a blasphemy.

By a majority of 3 to 2, the Lords concluded that intention was not required.

Lord Scarman was of the opinion that blasphemy laws should cover all religions and not just Christianity and sought strict liability for those who “cause grave offence to the religious feelings of some of their fellow citizens or are such as to tend to deprave and corrupt persons who are likely to read them“.

The appeal was lost.

The European Commission of Human Rights declared the case inadmissible to be heard by the European Court of Human Rights on 7 May 1982.

Above: European Court of Human Rights, Strasbourg, France

The £26,435 raised by the Gay News Fighting Fund through benefits and donations from the gay community and others, including a £500 donation from Monty Python, was sufficient to cover the costs of the trial and appeals.

Blasphemous libel ceased to be a common law offence in England and Wales with the passing of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008.

Above: Monty Python comedy group

Back row: Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam

Front row: Terry Jones, John Cleese, Michael Palin

In 1996, the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement was investigated after publishing a hyperlink to the Queer Resources Directory, an American website, that included a copy of the poem.

In April 1997 the police declared that they did not intend to prosecute.

The investigation was commented on by civil liberties groups as raising issues about whether linking constituted legally publication.

However, it did not produce a legal precedent on the question as it did not go to court.

In 2002, a deliberate and well-publicised public repeat reading of the poem took place on the steps of St Martin-in-the-Fields church in Trafalgar Square, London, without any incidents.

Kirkup criticized the politicizing of his poem.

Above: St. Martin’s in the Fields Church, London, England

Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols is the only studio album by English punk rock band the Sex Pistols, released on 28 October 1977 through Virgin Records in the UK and on 11 November 1977 through Warner Bros. Records in the US.

As a result of the Sex Pistols’ volatile internal relationships, the band’s lineup saw changes during the recording of the album.

Original bass guitarist Glen Matlock left the band early in the recording process, and while he is credited as a co-writer on all but two of the tracks, he only played bass and sang backing vocals on one track, “Anarchy in the UK“

Recording sessions continued with a new bass player, Sid Vicious, who is credited on two of the songs written by the band after he joined.

While Vicious’ bass playing appeared on two tracks, his lack of skill on the instrument meant that many of the tracks were recorded with guitarist Steve Jones playing bass instead.

Drummer Paul Cook, Jones and singer Johnny Rotten appear on every track.

The various recording sessions were led alternately by Chris Thomas or Bill Price, and sometimes both together, but as the songs on the final albums often combined mixes from different sessions, or were poorly documented who was present in the recording booth at the time, each song is jointly credited to both producers.

By the time of its release, the Sex Pistols were already controversial, having spoken profanity on live TV, been fired from two record labels, and been banned from playing live in some parts of Britain.

The album title added to that controversy, with some people finding the word “bollocks” offensive.

Many record stores refused to carry it and some record charts refused to list its title, showing just a blank space instead.

Due in part to its notoriety, and in spite of many sales bans at major retailers, the album debuted at number one on the UK Album Charts.

It achieved advance orders of 125,000 copies after a week of its release and went gold only a few weeks later, on 17 November.

It remained a best-seller for nearly a year, spending 48 weeks in the top 75.

The album has also been certified platinum by the RIAA.

It has seen several reissues, the latest in 2017.

The album has influenced many bands and musicians, and the industry in general.

In particular, the album’s raw energy, and Johnny Rotten’s sneering delivery and “half-singing“, are often considered game changing.

It is frequently listed as the most influential punk album, and one of the greatest and most important albums of all time.

Above: The Sex Pistols (from left): Paul Cook, Glen Matlock, Johnny Rotten and Steve Jones

In 1987, Rolling Stone magazine named the album the second best of the previous 20 years, behind only the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

The same magazine ranked it 73rd on their list of the 500 greatest albums of all time in 2020.

In 2006, it was chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 greatest albums ever.

In the United Kingdom, the album was subject to what Heylin described as “blatant acts of censorship exercised by media and retail outlets alike“.

London police visited the city’s Virgin record store branches and told them they faced prosecution for indecency as stipulated by the 1899 Indecent Advertisements Act if they continued to display posters of the album cover in their windows.

The displays were either toned down or removed.

However, on 9 November 1977 (just two days before the album was released in the US), the London Evening Standard announced on its front-page headline “Police Move in on Punk Disc Shops“, and reported how a Virgin Records shop manager in Nottingham was arrested for displaying the record after being warned to cover up the word “bollocks“.

Chris Seale, the shop’s manager, “it would appear, willingly set himself up as a target, possibly at Branson’s behest“, according to Heylin, who noted that he had been visited by the police on four occasions and resumed displaying copies of the record in the store windows after they had left on each occasion.

After Seale’s arrest, Branson announced that he would cover the manager’s legal costs and hired Queen’s Counsel John Mortimer as defence.

Meanwhile, advertisements for Never Mind the Bollocks appearing in music papers attempted to politicise the issue, showing newspaper headlines about Sex Pistols controversies that were underlined with the message:

“THE ALBUM WILL LAST.

THE SLEEVE MAY NOT.”

The obscenity case was heard at Nottingham Magistrates’ Court on 24 November.

Mortimer presented the case as a matter of police discrimination.

During his cross-examination of the arresting officer, he asked why the newspapers The Guardian and Evening Standard (which had referred to the album’s name) had not been charged under the same act.

When the overseeing magistrate inquired about his line of questioning, Mortimer stated that a double standard was apparently at play, and that “bollocks” was only considered obscene when it appeared on the cover of a Sex Pistols album.

The prosecutor conducted his cross-examination “as if the album itself, and not its lurid visage, was on trial for indecency“, according to Heylin.

Mortimer produced an expert witness, Professor James Kinsley, Head of the School of English at the University of Nottingham, who argued that the word “bollocks” was not obscene, and was actually a legitimate Old English term formerly used to refer to a priest, and which, in the context of the title, meant “nonsense“.

Lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, who appeared with Mortimer, recalled the professor saying that early English translations of the Bible used “bollocks” to refer to testicles, this being replaced by the word “stones” in the King James Version of the Bible, at which point Rotten handed Robertson a note saying:

“Don’t worry.

If we lose the case, we’ll retitle the album Never Mind the Stones, Here’s the Sex Pistols“.

The chairman of the hearing concluded:

“Much as my colleagues and I wholeheartedly deplore the vulgar exploitation of the worst instincts of human nature for the purchases of commercial profits by both you and your company, we must reluctantly find you not guilty of each of the four charges.“

Above: Nottingham Magistrates Court, Nottingham, England

Penelope Fletcher, better known as Penelope Mortimer, met John Mortimer while still married to Charles Dimont and pregnant with their last child.

Fletcher married Mortimer on 27 August 1949, the same day her divorce from Dimont became absolute.

Above: Penelope Mortimer (née Fletcher)(1918 – 1999)

Together they went on to have a son, Jeremy Mortimer, and a daughter, Sally Silverman.

The unstable marriage inspired work by both writers, of which Penelope’s novel, The Pumpkin Eater (1962), later made into a film of the same name, is best known.

(The film’s narrative revolves around Jo Armitage, a woman with an ambiguous number of children from three marriages, who becomes negative and withdrawn after discovering that her third (and current) husband, Jake, has been unfaithful to her.

After a series of loosely related events in which Jake’s infidelity is balanced by his reliability as a breadwinner and a father, Jo and Jake take a first tentative step toward reconciliation.

Thematically, there are two issues:

Jo’s frequent childbearing and Jake’s extramarital affairs.

The question of Jo’s fertility is first broached by her psychiatrist.

He suggests that she may feel uncomfortable with the messiness or vulgarity of sex and that she may be using childbirth to justify it to herself.

This does not prevent her from becoming pregnant again, but she follows suggestions by Jake and her doctor that she have an abortion and be sterilized, and she seems happy after the operation.

Meanwhile, signs accumulate that Jake has been having affairs while pursuing a successful career as a screenwriter.

The first indication of his infidelity concerns Philpot, a young woman who lived with the Armitage family for a while.

Jake reacts irrationally and unconvincingly to Jo’s questions after the children tell her the woman fainted into Jake’s arms.

The second sign comes from Bob Conway, an acquaintance who alleges an affair between his wife and Jake during production of a film in Morocco.

Finally, Jake admits some of his infidelities under heated interrogation by Jo.

After venting her frustration by furiously assaulting him, she retaliates by having an affair with her second husband.

This elicits coldness from Jake.

In the film’s finale, Jo spends a night alone in a windmill (near the converted barn she had lived in with her second husband and children) that the couple has been renovating.

The following morning, Jake and their children arrive at the windmill with food.

Seeing how happy her children are with Jake, Jo indicates her acceptance of him sadly, but graciously, accepting a tin of beer from him, a gesture which echoes another scene in the windmill from a happier time in their marriage.)

The couple divorced in 1971.

He married Penelope Gollop in 1972.

They had two daughters, Emily Mortimer (1971), and Rosie Mortimer (1984).

Above: Emily Mortimer

He and his second wife lived in the Buckinghamshire village of Turville Heath.

Above: Houses near St Mary’s churchyard, Cobstone Windmill in background, Turville, Buckinghamshire, England

The split with his first wife had been bitter, but they were on friendly terms by the time of her death in 1999.

In September 2004, the Sunday Telegraph journalist Tim Walker revealed that Mortimer had fathered another son, Ross Bentley, who was conceived during a secret affair Mortimer had with the English actress Wendy Craig more than 40 years earlier.

He was born in November 1961.

Above: English actress Wendy Craig

Craig and Mortimer had met when the actress had been cast playing a pregnant woman in Mortimer’s first full-length West End play, The Wrong Side of the Park.

Ross Bentley was raised by Craig and her husband, Jack Bentley, the show business writer and musician.

In Mortimer’s memoirs, Clinging to the Wreckage, he wrote of “enjoying my mid-thirties and all the pleasures which come to a young writer“.

To judge for myself, to vouchsafe an opinion regarding, the life and work of Mortimer, I will choose my words carefully.

First, let us draw a distinction between that which we deem immoral and that which we define as illegal.

Should the courts, should the state, decide for the people that what is immoral should be deemed illegal?

This also raises other questions:

Is what is considered illegal necessarily immoral?

Is what is considered legal by extension moral?

In regards to the aforementioned legal cases, all save for Lady Chatterley’s Lover defended by Mortimer, were these decisions morally correct?

First and foremost, whether I approve or disapprove of another person’s lifestyle is inconsequential.

My opinion does not give me the authority to tell another person how to live their life.

I may prefer that they act in ways I am more accustomed and comfortable with.

I may wish that their rational thought prohibit irrational behaviour, but this does not diminish their liberty to behave as libertine or chaste as they so desire.

Certainly, it would be preferable that individuals who pledge everlasting fidelity to those they publicly wedded remain faithful to one other, but that should not diminish the need to find one’s personal happiness in the limited lifespans we have.

Marriage is a public declaration of eternal love, sanctioned and complicated by legal obligations.

But marriage is an institution with elements of religion and legality, while the bond between two individuals, two consenting adults, should be, and by its very nature is, far more significant than the legal and moral restraints imposed upon a couple by the society wherein they live.

It is a mistake to demand that another person make us happy, for happiness does not come from within a relationship, but rather is generated by each individual themselves and is shared and ideally reciprocated.

Love and its physical expression of sex are a way out of our drab and dreary daily existence.

D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover with its 13 episodes of sex and its frequent use of profanity is, at first glance, not a book to be read by those who wish to repress the overt expression of emotion in its most crude forms.

But the point of being born as individuals is the need for self-expression, ideally in a socially acceptable way.

The power of self-expression and the desire to seek personal fulfillment does need to be tempered with a sense of responsibility for our words and deeds coupled with an awareness that much of what we say and do affects others and as a result produces both benefits and consequences.

In previous posts I have suggested that pornography is harmful if it replaces intimacy with others or is viewed excessively.

My problem with pornography is that it is an empty titillation of the mechanical act of sex rather than the expression of the intense awareness of joy and being that making love produces.

Lawrence presents sex with dignity and within that own little world of this private act the liberty of saying and doing whatever we wish.

Certainly, in a public gathering I find the expression of obscene words an unworthy substitute for the emotions and thoughts that we are unable to politely articulate.

I may wish that crass language is not so often employed but all manner of expression is needed to define ourselves.

That being said, just because we can say or do whatever we want does not mean that we should say or do whatever we want without accepting responsibility for the consequences of our words and actions.

In the case of Last Exit to Brooklyn, though I may not understand the lives of those who have chosen violence, the expression of transgender tendencies, the indulging in non-prescription relief from the woes of the world, unwed pregnancy, prostitution, domestic violence, the repression of one’s sexuality or even those who live lives of quiet desperation, this does not mean that it is necessarily healthy to ignore anything that makes us uncomfortable to consider.

Consequently those who feel discomfited by these topics have two choices:

Express themselves in return in a reactionary way that causes conflict or simply choose not to read the book or view the video adaptation.

I choose the latter course.

I choose not to be violent and I steer clear of those who are.

I may not understand the LGBTQ community, but as it is comprised of other human beings I choose to be compassionate to anyone with whom I interact.

I cannot choose how people act.

I can only control how I will react.

I will not suggest to anyone what they should or should not intake into their bodies, but it is my hope that they act with caution and moderation for their own self-protection.

The issue of reproductive rights is a controversial minefield upon which I have previously commented.

It is my hope that a child will be loved and welcomed by both parents, but just as a woman should have the right to decide whether she wants to be a responsible mother so should a man have a similar say in regards to whether he wishes to be a responsible father.

Prostitution is not a love story and thus reduces intimate acts into commercial copulation which, though in its crassness is often more honest than the mind games that revolve around this desire in socially sanctioned relationships, it diminishes the magic of intimacy into mere movements of private parts.

I agree with the premise of The Little Red Schoolbook that we should question societal norms, that we should do as others do if this replication of behaviour brings happiness to us.

In a way, this is a reverse application of what I said earlier.

Just because we are told what we should do and say does not necessarily follow that these directives are appropriate for everyone.

But again, rightly or wrongly, actions have consequences and those who reject societial norms can expect reactions from those we have rejected.

I also think as discomfited as we may feel personally about certain subjects I still believe that open informed discussion is far superior to disastrous exploration and misadventure.

Yes, people have sex.

Whether we feel they should or shouldn’t does not preclude us from our responsibility of being informed as to both the potential pleasures and consequences inherent with this act.

Yes, people take drugs.

Whether we feel they should or shouldn’t does not mean that we should not be aware of the effects, both positive and negative, of ingesting or injecting substances not recommended by medical science.

Regarding the case of Oz, you cannot tackle the police nor the underworld without there being repurcussions.

As for the poem “The Love That Dares to Speak Its Name“, I will repeat yet again the sentiments I have previously expressed on Facebook regarding Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy and Charlie Hebdo.

I do not condone violence regardless of the blasphemy that provokes it.

That being said, one should not poke a bear unless one wishes to deal with its wrath.

Freedom of expression does not mean carte blanche to say whatever one wishes to without considering the consequences of one’s comments.

Islam forbids depiction of the Prophet or to deny Allah as a singularity and unique entity and though these rules apply to Muslims, it is distinctly controversial, to say the least, for those taboos to be violated in a public medium such as a cartoon in a newspaper or magazine or in a novel.

Again I suggest that although one can do or say anything, whether one should do or say that which offends an entire faith of 1.9 billion souls seems folly at best.

Unfortunately, folly of expression generates the folly and tragedy of violent reaction.

Above: The Kaabah (Kaaba) is located in the Masjid Al-Haram in Makkah (Mecca, Saudi Arabia). This photo was taken during the 2018 Hajj Season. Performing hajj is one of the pillars of Islam and required once for those who can afford to do it. Here the hajj pilgrims are performing the ‘tawaf‘ around the Kaabah.

Though Christianity has evolved from burning folks for blasphemy to court battles defending the individual’s freedom to decide for himself what he will or won’t believe, what he will or won’t read, the poem suggesting that Christ was a buggerer runs contrary to the canon of the faith.

There is no suggestion in scripture that Christ engaged in intimate behaviour with anyone.

It is suggested that He felt love and sorrow and anger as any man does, but whether He was driven by desires of the flesh other than thirst, hunger and physical pain seems distant from the established doctrine of the faith.

Above: Jesus and the devil depicted in The Temptation of Christ, by Ary Scheffer, 1854

Whether there is wisdom in denying oneself pleasures of the flesh is a debatable discussion.

D.H. Lawrence and other literary giants would argue that there is almost a religious release, a sensory salvation, resulting from a complete intimacy between two individuals who love one another.

I neither condone nor condemn the comfort found in copulation between two consensual adults, but in my limited understanding of matters spiritual it seems to me that religion seeks a separation of that which is flesh and that which is faith.

Holy water becomes muddied when the notion of those deemed divine (or divinely inspired) engage in activity best kept in the boudoir rather than roughly written and slyly suggested in crass copies of questionable quality.

Above: D.H. Lawrence and wife Frieda

There is another freedom that we rarely consider but applies here.

Just as we have the freedom to believe as we will and to read what we choose, we also have the freedom to not purchase what is offered us.

If you believe that the message of a medium runs contrary to what you espouse then choose to ignore that medium.

[Verse 1: Phil Collins]
While I’m sittin’ here
Trying to think of things to say
Someone lies bleeding
In a field somewhere

[Chorus: Phil Collins]
So it would seem
We’ve still got a long, long way to go
I’ve seen all I wanna see today

[Verse 2: Phil Collins]
While I’m sittin’ here
Trying to move you anyway I can
Someone’s son lies dead
In a gutter somewhere

[Chorus: Phil Collins]
And it would seem
That we’ve still got a long, long way to go
I can’t take it anymore

[Post-Chorus: Phil Collins]
Turn it off if you want to
Switch it off, it will go away
Turn it off if you want to
Switch it off or look away

[Verse 3: Phil Collins]
While we’re sittin’ and we talk and talk and we talk some more
Someone’s loved one’s heart
Stops beating in a street somewhere

[Chorus: Phil Collins]
So it would seem
We’ve still got a long, long way to go, I know
I’ve heard all I wanna hear today

[Post-Chorus: Phil Collins, Sting]
Turn it off if you want to (Turn it off if you want to)
Switch it off it will go away (Switch it off it will go away)
Turn it off if you want to (Turn it off if you want to)
Switch it off or look away (Switch it off or look away)

[Outro: Phil Collins]
Switch it off
Switch it off
Switch it off
Switch it off
Switch it off
Switch it off
Switch it off
Turn it off

Don’t agree with Fox News?

Don’t watch.

The idea of Allah having daughters offends you?

Then don’t seek fatwa for the foolish, but instead simply let literature of this ilk gather the dust of neglect that it deserves.

If the idea of Christ acting carnally repulses you then choose to relegate such blasphemy to the trash heap where low-quality “literature” inevitably dies.

People will read what they want and believe what they will whether we agree with them or not.

I think where I find violent reaction to blatant blasphemy questionable is the angry arrogance that the divine needs human intervention to defend it.

If God exists and is as almighty as religion suggests then He is quite capable of defending Himself without our aid.

If what you believe cannot bear questioning or doubt or even comic commentary, then how strong can your faith possibly be?

I am not here to steady Noah’s Ark.

If you believe it to be fact then my attempts to discredit it do not diminish its existence for you.

Perhaps if we devoted less energy to the invisible that does not need defending and instead devoted ourselves to the care and comfort of that seek our solace we might truly be deserving of divine love and redemption.

Above: Noah’s Ark, Edward Hicks (1846)

As for the inclusion or removal of the word “bollocks” from a record album, I believe this argument is as pointless as two bald men battling over a comb.

Crass language is common and the common man will use crass language whether or not we take offence.

The F word, the use of crude comments or language that makes sailors blush will not disappear from the vernacular despite removing said language from public display.

The young will find this language from their home environment, from their classmates and from the undiscriminating media to which they are exposed.

As to the personal life of John Mortimer, I have no comment.

Relationships are complicated because human beings are complex.

I am grateful to Mortimer, for his defence of a person’s right to decide for himself what books he will or won’t read, or to what music he will or won’t listen.

I am grateful to Mortimer for his creation of Rumpole of the Bailey.

I see in myself some of the character of Rumpole.

I am distinctive in the attire I customarily wear.

I am passionate in the job that I do and I do not seek a “higher calling” to positions that keep me from doing that which I love.

Let me defend Rumpole in the manner in which he defended Uncle Tom – “the oldest member of Chambers, who has not had a brief as long as any of us can remember“, usually seen happily practicing his golf putting in the clerk’s room or offering cheerfully inappropriate comments in Chambers’ meetings.

“It is like great poetry that is unnecessary.

You can’t eat it.

It doesn’t make you money.

I suppose that there are some people, Ballard (the Head of Chambers, a very pious and priggish person), who can get through life like you, without Wordsworth’s sonnet “On Westminster Bridge”.

What we are discussing here is quality of life.

Uncle Tom adds an imaginative tone to what would otherwise be a dusty, dreary little clerks’ office full of barristers, biscuits and briefs.“

Rumpole would hold that obituaries should never be lively reading.

Only on this point do we disagree.

Sources

Wikipedia

Wikiquote

“Unwritten“, Natasha Bedingford

“Long, Long Way to Go“, Phil Collins

“My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors“, Moxy Früvous

The Little Red Schoolbook, Soren Hansen and Jesper Jensen

“I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face“, Rex Harrison

Lady Chatterley’s Lover, D. H. Lawrence

Bunny Lake Is Missing, John Mortimer

Charade, John Mortimer

The Dock Brief, John Mortimer

Like Men Betrayed, John Mortimer

Rumpole of the Bailey, John Mortimer

A Voyage Round My Father, John Mortimer

What Shall We Tell Caroline?, John Mortimer

“One of Us“, Joan Osborne

Last Exit to Brooklyn, Hubert Selby Jr.

“Autobiography“, Sloan

“Memory“, Barbara Streisand

By Canada Slim

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