Page "Sexual revolution" Paragraph 42

An early inkling of changing attitudes came in 1960, when the government of the day tried unsuccessfully to prosecute Penguin Books for obscenity, for publishing the D. H. Lawrence novel Lady Chatterley's Lover, which had been banned since the 1920s for what was considered racy content.

The prosecution counsel Mervyn Griffith-Jones famously stood in front of the jury and asked, in his closing statement: " Is it a book you would wish your wife or servants to read?

" When the case collapsed, the novel went on to become a bestseller, selling two million copies.