FOI_25-293 Content warnings for specific books

Date of response: 08 October 2025

We have now considered your request of 29 September 2025 for the following information:

On this FOI (FOI_25-181) I was just wondering if I could request the specific content warnings for three individual texts on the Banned Books module - D. H. Lawrence, ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’, George Orwell, ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four' and Salman Rushdie, ‘The Satanic Verses’?

Our response:

D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover

Censorship context: When Lawrence wrote Lady Chatterley’s Lover in 1928 it was so obscene by the standards of the day that he did not even try to get it published in the UK, choosing instead to bring it out through a small Italian press. Lawrence was long dead when Penguin Books decided to test the new Obscene Publications Act of 1959 by bringing out a paperback edition of the book in 1960. The result was the notorious Lady Chatterley’s Lover Trial in 1960. A number of famous literary critics and religious leaders were witnesses for the defence of Lawrence’s novel, and it was acquitted. It is often seen as a watershed moment in British culture and attitudes. Lawrence’s novel radically tests the boundaries of obscene expression. The book includes lots of obscene words, such as fuck, and explicit descriptions of sexual activities. We will consider the book alongside the trial – which had its farcical aspects - and the significance of the fact that Penguin planned to publish it as a cheap paperback and that the book would, therefore, be available to a mass readership.

In class I also highlight that the text includes racist language, and the representation of sexual violence.

George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

Censorship context: Orwell’s famous novel was banned in the Soviet Union between its publication in 1949 and the effective end of the cold war in 1989. Interestingly, however, there was also pressure in some US contexts for the book to be banned because Orwell was seen as a Communist. We will read the book as a key text in the politicisation of free speech during the cold war. This week we will consider the Communist state censorship of literary texts, exploring the rationale for censorship, as well as the reasons why writers chose to question and break the rules. Above all, however, Orwell’s novel includes an extended meditation on why totalitarian states prohibit free speech, its importance to what it means to be human, its power and its limits.

In class I also highlight that the text includes representations of anti-semitic language and torture.

Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

Censorship context: This week we tackle the notorious Rushdie affair. When The Satanic Verses was first published in the UK in 1988, it was lauded as a brilliant post-modern novel, and was shortlisted for the Booker prize. But many Muslims, both within the UK and further afield, saw it as deeply offensive and blasphemous. On 14th February 1989, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, issued a fatwã calling for Rushdie’s death. Along with a failed assassination attempt on Rushdie, his Japanese translator Hitoshi Igarashi was killed. The book was banned in India as hate speech directed at a specific religious group. The ‘Rushdie’ affair was a truly global publishing event and censorship case, and it has had wide-reaching implications on understandings of literature, blasphemous offence, censorship and freedom of expression. The threat to Rushdie has been ongoing. In August 2022 he was stabbed on stage in New York by Hadi Matar, who said that, while he had only read a couple of pages of The Satanic Verses he did not like Rushdie because of his criticism of Islam. We will consider the novel and its representation of Islam, the Prophet Muhammad, authoritarianism and freedom of expression.

[In class I highlight that the book represents distorted scenes from Islamic history that are blasphemous and deeply offensive to some Muslims]

Banned Books: Content Notes

On the module I combine content notes on the reading list and verbal warnings in class. For each week’s reading I provide a paragraph on the reading list detailing why the books we study have been seen as controversial – which I have reproduced below. In addition, I highlight in class those aspects of the book which current readers might find distressing.

General Content Notes on Reading List

The books on this module explore the representation of subjects such as violence, racism, race hate speech, homophobic speech, blasphemy and sexual assault, which some students may find distressing. Discussions of gender, sexuality and race will also feature as part of the teaching content. Some of this may be emotionally and intellectually challenging to engage with. I will try to flag especially graphic or intense content and will do my best to make this classroom a space where we can engage, empathetically and thoughtfully with difficult content every week.