civil servant

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Dr Richard Espley introduces the Craig Collection, a Special Printed Collection at Senate House Library, University of London. Video transcript: Senate House Library University of London The Craig Collection An introduction by Dr Richard Espley Who was Alec Craig? Alec Craig was born in 1897 in a very modest home and was apprenticed as a boy clerk into the British civil service. It might have seemed that his path in life was set and in fact he stayed in the civil service until 1962 when he retired as a senior civil servant. However, after his experiences on the western front in the first world war Craig became a very passionate and committed libertarian and campaigned on a wide range of social issues including the decriminalisation of homosexuality and abortion and the reform of divorce law. However he is most clearly associated with the cause of the abolition of literary censorship in the UK. He published four books chiefly or solely on this topic and he gave evidence to the House of Commons select committee, which eventually gave rise to the Obscene Publications act of 1959 which implemented many of the reforms Craig had campaigned for. He also was a published poet publishing four volumes of poetry during his lifetime as well as numerous articles, and was also an inveterate letter writer. Why did he collect erotic works? Craig ultimately had around three thousand books when he died, but even around the 500 or so that are in Senate House Library there are works on church history and local history as well as the theoretical study of sexuality and erotic or censured books, for which he is most famous. He collected them partly to exchange information others who were interested in the same topic as him. He exchanged huge amounts of bibliographic information by post with correspondents all around the world and he also collected in order to preserve the books that were under direct threat of physical destruction by the obscenity laws. What does the collection tell us about censorship and changing social taboos? I think there's a temptation when we look at the Craig Collection to congratulate ourselves on being a great deal more enlightened than the society in which Craig found himself. I think we need to be very careful before we just construct an argument that now we are a more accepting, more tolerant society. Certainly the lines of toleration have moved. It might seem strange to contemporary readers that the works of Oscar Wilde or J K Huysman would be in the Craig Collection and subject to censorship, but there are also works in Craig's library that are perhaps ... that are perhaps less tolerated today than they would have been in his time. For example, Craig bought the novels of Henry Miller and believed that the only reason there may have been a restriction on reading those was because they were sexually explicit. Now, while they are not banned today by any means the novels of Henry Miller are largely overlooked because of their unsettling sexual politics and their misogyny. We certainly haven't lost the feeling that works of literature or works of art can have a negative effect on human behaviour. Rather than hearing about the corruption of the morals of youth we now hear more perhaps about fears of violence and violent behaviour being caused by such works. But I think we need to acknowledge that there is still a line that society likes to draw between that which is acceptable and that which isn't acceptable. And perhaps the drawing of that line is more important than what's on either side of it. I think we also need to bear in mind that there can be a strong element of hypocrisy in some of this and I'm reminded of Craig's last book, where he said very wisely: 'We are all tempted to be readers of erotic books and censures of sexual literature.' [The Craig Collection is a Printed Special Collection at Senate House Library, University of London.]