What playwright was jailed for stealing and defacing books from the Islington Library?
Mike Phillips (writer) became a full-time writer. He has said, "One of the experiences that made me a writer was the realisation that I was written out of a small piece of literary history in the film "Prick Up Your Ears", the biography of controversial playwright Joe Orton, author of "Entertaining Mr Sloane". Orton and his friend Kenneth Halliwell were frequent visitors to Essex Road Library where I worked as a library assistant. I regularly spoke to them and didn't know that they were defacing the books, an act that eventually put them in jail. When the scene was depicted on film I
Library-book vandalism Library-book vandalism Library-book or -materials vandalism, sometimes termed intentional destruction of books or materials or book or material mutilation is the act of damaging or defacing library books or other library holdings. It is a considerable loss of resources for libraries with high rates of vandalism. As with book theft at libraries, vandalism of books has been studied by a number of library professionals. Librarians consider book vandalism and mutilation a "threat to intellectual property" and have seen it as a "tremendous challenge to the library profession worldwide." Handwriting or marks in and tearing or removal of pages from books