Islington Museum currently has an exhibition of library books defaced in the 1950s by the playwright Joe Orton and his lover Kenneth Halliwell. Orton later became a well-known, but not necessarily very good, playwright. The pair of them went to prison for six months for defacing the books, causing £450 damage (the equivalent now, perhaps, of £25,000), stealing 72 others, and cutting out 1,653 art plates. ... However talented Orton may have been, no talent justifies this kind of vandalism; and if we choose to glorify as Islington Museum does, we ought not to be surprised that some people think they can behave in the same, yobbish way.
Things are hardly better on those shores.
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