Autobiography

Perhaps I should sign this long chapter Mr
Angry from Purley; it serves no purpose to
allow things like this to eat away at your soul
so long after the event. But there are still
unanswered questions, like, how Lord Lane,
the chairman of Penguin Books, didn’t have to
stand in the box when he was defending Lady
Chatterley’s Lover or go down to the cells
during the breaks, like I did?
The laws of obscenity were extremely difficult
to interpret at that time and when the police
frequently arrived to confiscate our product,
one magistrate would instruct them to return
our magazines, whilst another would shake his
head and order them to be destroyed. There
was a difference between the big cities and the
provinces. In London we were invariably given
our product back by magistrates who were
used to dealing with real life; in the provinces,
however, magistrates who were mainly dealing
with parking offences agreed with the police
and ordered our magazines to be destroyed.
But my fights with authority have not always
been in the name of erotica or girlie
magazines. We have crossed swords on all
manner of different issues.
One of these was my local council’s
unwillingness to put a stop to the considerable
mess and damage caused by gipsies camped at
the bottom of the lane where I live, not to
mention their trespassing on the properties of
other residents and, in some cases, thieving.
When I acquired some extra land around my
home, which the gypsies had been using
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