Censorship and the Permissive Society

Anthony Aldgate is Senior Lecturer in History and Sub Dean in Arts at The Open University, Visiting Professor at the University of Luton, and Associate Tutor at Rewley House, Oxford.He is author of Cinema and History: British Newsreels and the Spanish Civil War (Scolar Press, London, 1979); Best of British: Cinema and Society, 1930-1970 (Blackwell, 1983; Barnes & Noble, Totowa, NJ, 1983); Britain Can Take It: The British Cinema in the Second World War (Blackwell, 1986), to be revised and expanded in 1994 by Edinburgh UP; The Common Touch: The Films of John Baxter (BFI, 1989); Between Two Wars (Open UP, 1990); World War II and Its Consequences (Open UP, 1990).

Making use of a range of recently released documentation from the files of the British Board of Film Censors and the Lord Chamberlain's office, Anthony Aldgate presents a brief but fascinating picture of British puritanism at work in the decade between 1955 and 1965, a decade which saw the beginnings of the permissive society in Britain. Dr Aldate tells the story very well ...