novella said:
I think in the UK (maybe other European countries too) banning is a national phenomenon, like the recent banning of the latest Kitty Kelley book, the one about the Bush Dynasty.
In the UK it seems more serious, in that it is an overall gov't policy that makes the book illegal throughout the nation, whereas in the US, it's just a formal censorship against having it in the school curriculum. No books are banned from being sold in stores or being owned.
In the case of the Bush/Kelley book banned in UK, the excuse was that the libel laws in the UK are so stringent that the book would certainly come under attack and lose. Funny, Kelley writes these books all the time (incediary unauthorized biographies) and has never lost a libel case--apparently she's very good at sourcing her material. So, what's that about? I think politics might have been a factor?
Just to clarify: I know you didn't intend to mislead, novella, but what you say is inaccurate. Books are never, ever banned by the government in the UK. Very occasionally - the last example I can think of being Peter Wright's memoir
Spycatcher, in the 1980s - a book is not published in the UK because its author has breached the Official Secrets Act (ie was a civil servant [government official] and has made public in their book details which are subject to the Official Secrets Act, which all civil servants sign and agree to be bound by when they enter service). Even then the book is not 'banned' but simply not published as the publisher knows that if they do issue it, they and the author will be prosecuted. Maybe that seems like a fine distinction, but as I say, it's very rare anyway.
The Kitty Kelley book on the Bushes
was published in the UK (I remember picking up a copy in Waterstone's): maybe you are thinking of Craig Unger's
House of Bush, House of Saud, which wasn't. Again this is a case of a publisher deciding not to publish, rather than the book being banned. In this case, the issue as you rightly identify is libel, where laws in the UK make libel actions much more favourable to the complainant. This of course is nothing to do with government action, because any libel proceedings would be a civil action brought by the person allegedly libelled (presumably Bush Sr or Jr in the case of the Unger book), not by the government as a prosecution.
The other issue, now effectively dead, is obscenity. For this, see Alan Travis's excellent book
Bound and Gagged: A Secret History of Obscenity in Britain. This shows that since the
Lady Chatterley trial in 1960, and the flurry that followed, no book has been banned (ie withheld by the publisher for fear of prosecution under the Obscene Publications Act) in the UK for obscenity.
