Malicious Damage: Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell in Islington

Joe Orton's story is dark, but well known: a briefly successful writing career, ended by murder at the hands of his lover, Kenneth Halliwell. But for this free talk, Mark Ashton – who curates the Joe Orton Collection at the Islington Museum - describes the events that preceded Orton's brief flirtation with fame. In 1962, he and Halliwell were imprisoned for 'malicious damage' to books in Islington Public Library: they had added text and images, mostly offensive, to book covers and contents, as well as wallpapering their Noel Road bedsit with images from those library books.