The Censorship of British Drama 1900-1968 ─ The Fifties

This volume is the third part of Steve Nicholson’s four-volume analysis of British theater censorship from 1900 until 1968, based on previously undocumented materials from the Lord Chamberlain’s Correspondence Archives at the British Library and the Royal Archives at Windsor. Charting a range of relevant topics from the period—including the standoffs with Samuel Beckett and with leading American dramatists; the Lord Chamberlain’s determination to keep homosexuality off the stage and to rewrite censorship laws, which resulted in the prohibition of performances of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and A View from the Bridge, among other plays; and the early struggles of Royal Court writers such as John Osborne—Nicholson focuses on the plays we know, those we have forgotten, and even those that have been forever silenced.

Steve Nicholson is Reader in Twentieth-Century and Contemporary Theatre at the University of Sheffield.