THE TRIALS OF PORTNOY

It is interesting the very people who evangelise about freedom and democracy are the very ones who always want to curtail our liberties. Especially, in the past, when it came to books and what we can or cannot read. This account of how a group of brave publishers, booksellers and academics brought down Australia’s ridiculous censorship regime, bringing to light the amazing verbal contortions and twisted logic state and federal governments would go to in order to keep us in order. With the publication of Philip Roth’s in 1970, Penguin Books set in motion a series of prosecutions that showed how illiterate our leaders were, and just how far they were willing to go to impose a morality that itself was corrupt and depraved — charges they laid on books they didn’t like, had often never read or that may lead readers to think.