The jury at the Old Bailey found Penguin Books not guilty of obscenity over their publication of the unexpurgated version of Lady Chatterley's Lover, or "Lady C" as the novel had become known. The defence successfully claimed that the book was in the "Public good" as outlined in the Obscene Publications Act 1959.

Reporting of the trial was exhaustive, though the Guardian was the only newspaper to include the word "fuck" in it's court reports. This was the first time the word "fuck" had been used in a national newspaper, or so Wayland Young (bylined above) later claimed