Joe Orton: The life and crimes of a great playwright
Orton and Halliwell began stealing from local libraries in 1959. They were poor, unpublished and increasingly isolated from the world around them. The book stealing began as a cut-price way to let off steam and decorate their tiny flat into the bargain: almost all of the 1,653 art plates ended up as collages on the walls of 25 Noel Road.
The remaining 72 stolen books (novels, plays, biographies and works of glorious obscurity like Selvarajan Yesudian’s Yoga and Health) had their dust jackets re-designed in a lewdly comic fashion. A sober critical appreciation of John Betjeman was emblazoned with a near-naked, tattooed elderly gentleman. The only remaining part of the cover – JOHN BETJEMAN – stands out like a deadpan, and mildly sinister caption. The titles on the front of Emlyn Williams’s Collected Plays were altered to create sexual innuendos: “Knickers Must Fall” and “Fucked by Monty”. The exception is the seemingly innocuous “He Was Born Gray” – until it dawns that Williams’s original was He Was Born Gay.
Ironically it was a tamer, if surreal effort – a gorilla’s head affixed to a flower on Collins Guide to Roses – that provoked the greatest outrage at their trial. “A quite lovely book,” the prosecuting barrister noted sadly.
Orton himself later explained the custodial sentence by claiming the judge knew that he and Halliwell were “queers”. Due to the absence of trial transcripts, Foxsmith cannot prove whether homophobia did influence magistrate Harold Sturge. Instead, he concentrates on the legal differences between 2012 and 1962 – Foxsmith thinks they will be charged with theft, criminal damage and possibly a public order offence for their intent to shock.
