An enjoyable anecdote in John Campbell’s new biography of Roy Jenkins involves Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s last-minute wobble over the attempt by Jenkins, as home secretary in the late 1960s, to abolish theatrical censorship by the Lord Chamberlain. Initially supportive, Wilson suddenly argued for the retention of some sort of blue pencil in order, he said, to prevent the dramatisation of living figures, such as the Queen.
A more cynical interpretation (suspected by Jenkins then and Campbell now) is that Downing Street’s motivation lay closer to home: a play called Mrs Wilson’s Diary, satirising the British first lady, was about to open. But if Wilson was trying to protect his monarch rather than his missus from Jenkins’s liberalisation of the stage, then the ex-PM has been vindicated.
Content from our partners
