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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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censorship
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Those in power have always attempted to suppress information or opinions harmful to their own interests, and their task became both more urgent and more difficult after the invention of printing in the 15C. In Britain the Tudor monarchs introduced controls over both the printed and the declaimed word. From the 1530s every book had to be licensed, a function carried out from 1557 by the Stationers' Company; licensing was extended in the 17C to the first newspapers; it ended in 1695, but a charge of seditious libel then became the favoured method for silencing adversaries (for example *Wilkes, *Paine and *Cobbett).
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The classic work in the long argument against censorship of the press is Milton's Areopagitica (1644). Censorship of literature on the grounds of obscenity was successfully challenged in the case of *Lady Chatterley's Lover.
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The licensing of plays was carried out in the Tudor period by the Master of the Revels. It later passed to another royal official, the *lord chamberlain, and it remained one of his duties – an astonishing anachronism – until 1968.
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