Tribunal “Did A Good Job”

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30393, 18 March 1964, Page 18

Tribunal “Did A Good Job”

New Zealand’s new Indecent Publications Tribunal “seems to have approached its task in a very sound way indeed,” Mr F. J. M. Dent, chairman and managing-director of J. M. Dent and Sons, Ltd., a British publishing firm, said in Christchurch yesterday.

The tribunal “did a very good job” with its judgment on James Baldwin’s “Another Country,” he said.

Mr Dent was in the Court to hear the decision given. “Although my own Ann has not often had publications held up by censorship, I am always disappointed when I hear of restrictions being placed on good literature,” said Mr Dent.

“On general principles, if a book is acceptable in most parts of the world it should be acceptable in all parts; although I do not deny the right of any country to decide such things for itself,” he said.

Asked if British book firms met difficulties elsewhere in the world for political or other reasons not connected with indecency, Mr Dent said every publisher would give a different kind of answer, according to the type of books be published. His own firm, which specialised in children’s and educational books, the classics, and reference books, had had “remarkably little difficulty in any country." Asked if paper-covered editions were likely to supersede cloth-bound books,

Mr Dent said there would always be a demand for stiff bindings for library and reference books. The paperbacks seemed to reach new readers rather than displace the cloth-bound editions. Mr Dent commented on the “quite exceptional standard and spread” of good bookshops in New Zealand.