Ban This Filth!: Letters from the Mary Whitehouse Archive 1963-2001 is a 2012 non-fiction book edited by Ben Thompson and published by Faber & Faber. It is a collection of letters written by Mary Whitehouse, leader of the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association, who perceived a coarsening of material in the BBC.
The author previously served as a ghost writer for books credited to famous people and wrote articles about music for publications. [1]
The book uses content about Whitehouse held at the NVLA archives at Essex University, which occupies 300 files. [1] Jonathan Sale of The Daily Telegraph described some of the contents as "richly humorous". [2]
According to Sale, the comments written by the editor were "droll". [2] Karl Miller of the Irish Times described the style of the comments as "a smart, media-wise, Jack the Lad commentary that knows enough to recognise it’s right to ask: was she right?" [3]
The editor argued that the changes Whitehouse advocated for would have negatively affected British culture, [2] but he also believed that some of her points may have had merits. [3] Martin Fletcher of The Independent wrote "From a liberal perspective, it's not the singularity of her opinions that unsettle, but rather the issues she got right". [4]
The Daily Telegraph ranked the book four of five stars, giving praise for the "relentlessly jaunty tone" in Thomopson's commentary. [1]
Stuart Jeffries of The Guardian described the book as "entertaining". [5]
Fletcher praised the book's comments for being "admirably even-handed" and "witty and engaging". [4]
Diana, Lady Mosley, known as Diana Guinness between 1929 and 1936, was a British aristocrat, fascist, writer and editor. She was one of the Mitford sisters and the wife of Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists.
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Constance Mary Whitehouse was a British teacher and conservative activist. She campaigned against social liberalism and the mainstream British media, both of which she accused of encouraging a more permissive society. She was the founder and first president of the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association, through which she led a longstanding campaign against the BBC. A hard-line social conservative, she was termed a reactionary by her socially liberal opponents. Her motivation derived from her Christian beliefs, her aversion to the rapid social and political changes in British society of the 1960s, and her work as a teacher of sex education.
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Andrea Stuart is a Barbadian-British historian and writer, who was raised in the Caribbean and the UK and now lives in the UK. Her biography of Josephine Bonaparte, entitled The Rose of Martinique, won the Enid McLeod Literary Prize in 2004. Although her three published books so far have been non-fiction, she has spoken of working on a novel set in the 18th century.
Whitehouse magazine, also known as Whitehouse International, was a British pornographic magazine originally published by David Sullivan, and later sold to Gold Star Publications. It was first published in 1974. Billed as "The International Quality Glamour Magazine", it was substantially more explicit than its predecessors, showing uncensored images of genitalia.
[...]it's right to ask: was she right? Yes and no is an answer – his, I think – that would not have pleased the late Mary, for whom black was black and white white.