Abstract

This is the second part of Steve Nicholson’s four-volume analysis of British theatre censorship from 1900 until 1968, based on previously undocumented material in the Lord Chamberlain’s Correspondence Archives in the British Library and the Royal Archives at Windsor. It covers the period from 1933 to 1952, and focuses on theatre censorship during the period before the outbreak of the second world war, during the war itself, and in the immediate post-war period.

The focus will be primarily on political and moral censorship. The book documents and analyses the control exercised by the Lord Chamberlain. It also reviews the pressures exerted on him and on the theatre by the government, the monarch, the church, foreign embassies and by influential public figures and organisations.

Steve Nicholson is Professor of 20th-Century and Contemporary Theatre, and Director of Drama, in the School of English at the University of Sheffield. He is the series editor for Exeter Performance Studies and the author of British Theatre and the Red Peril: The Portrayal of Communism, 1917-1945, also published by UEP.

‘Nicholson writes with wit and insight, and his work is always engaging. He has the happy knack of being able to offer analysis of extremely serious and complex issues in an entirely accessible way and illuminates his scholarship with immensely attractive and informative anecdotes and illustrations of one kind and another.’
(Martin Banham, Emeritus Professor of Drama & Theatre Studies, University of Leeds)