The Index of Prohibited Books: Four Centuries of Struggle Over Word and Image for the Greater Glory of God
Robin Vose
Reaktion Press, £25, 296 pages
This history of the Catholic Church’s modern attempt to control literary culture is not quite the secularist polemic that one might expect. This is partly because the author emphasises the messy complexity of this history, and the impossibility of the task of censorship, once print culture took off. The attempt to proscribe new works as they poured from the presses was such an uphill struggle that the reader almost sympathises with the hapless authorities.
