The Lord Chamberlain Regrets...: A History of British Theatre Censorship

by Dominic Shellard, Steve Nicholson, Miriam Handley

Between 1824 and 1968, British theatre was controlled by censorship. Under the dictate of the Lord Chamberlain's Office, all new plays were read for unfavourable or corrupting content with the intention of protecting the "vulnerable" audiences of the time. Such material was either instructed to be cut or the play to be banned. The effect that censorship may have had on the plays that came out of this period, not to mention the ones that never even got written, is crucial to our understanding of the history and development of theatre in Britain.

Revealed here for the first time are a selection of extensive extracts from key reports, correspondence, and memoranda about some of the most significant plays of the period. Many documents are reproduced in their entirety, allowing the reader direct access to original, unpublished, and unedited archive material. The authors contextualize this material within the political and moral issues of the time, and reveal the fascinating processes and debates that occurred in and around the Lord Chamberlain's Office.

Genres: Politics, Theatre, History

197 pages, Hardcover

First published April 30, 2005

Reviews

[Malcolm Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have always bee interested in censorship in the 20th century .More so film than theatre.
The first 66 ages dealing with its history are of no great interest. However the last 30 years are.Many of the plays mentioned are familiar to me as films,which were as neutered as the plays the Lord Chamberlain was consistently homophobic,a snob but prepared to stand up against political censorship in the thirties.
One can say that seeing emasculated versions of plays as films is better than not seeing them at all.
Though how it managed to last so long is a bit surprising.