Britain is under the Nazi jackboot. Africa is no more.

Life is full of suffering, pain, and brutality. That was the world imagined by Manchester writers David Britton and Michael Butterworth in their horror fantasy Lord Horror.

But to call the novel – the last in Britain to be banned under the Obscene Publication Act – ‘controversial’ would be an understatement. Hundreds of copies of the book were ordered to be destroyed by a Manchester magistrate in August 1991.

The ban was eventually lifted by the Court of Appeal in a hearing hailed as a freedom of speech landmark. But two decades after the trial, the book has never been re-published. The few surviving copies change hands at auction for up to £400.

The Manchester duo behind Savoy Publishing and bookstore were no strangers to controversy. Their Deansgate business, stocking comics, horror magazines and books, was raided more than 40 times during the 1980s.

Greater Manchester Police – led by Chief Constable James Anderton – was in the throes of a crackdown on immorality, sex crime, and vice.

Britton, a writer and publisher, had already received a month-long jail sentence for an offence relating obscene material in a highly contested case. But the publishers’ own provocative foray into literature put them on a collision course with the force’s top brass.

Mr Anderton, known in some quarters as ‘God’s Copper’ for his strong Christian beliefs, had made a widely-publicised speech in which he described homosexuals as ‘swirling in a cesspool of their own making’.

A thinly-disguised version of the infamous speech appeared in Britton and Butterworth’s 1989 book, with the word ‘Jew’ substituted for ‘homosexual’ throughout.

The first to notice was journalist Doreen Wachmann, whose article appeared on the front page of the Jewish Telegraph.

Reflecting on what happened, she said: “We got sent a number of review books at the Telegraph. I’ve no idea why I persisted with reading it. I was quite horrified by the subject matter.

“I do recall noticing the speech which one character gives and referred it to Anderton and the police and they took it further. Obviously I believe there should be freedom of the press and freedom of speech but the line has to be drawn somewhere.”

Vice squad police were sent to clear the shelves of the Savoy. The novel was banned by stipendary magistrate
Derrick Fairclough, using a law designed to tackle extreme pornography.

But his decision was overturned at Manchester Crown Court, when Geoffrey Robertson QC argued the law should not apply to novels.

Specialising in freedom of expression cases, the barrister agreed to take on the Manchester pair’s case.

He told the MEN: “I could not, personally, discern that the book had much merit, but in my view it certainly was not obscene and had been prosecuted in breach of a recommendation that there be no further prosecutions of the written word.

“So I was very annoyed that Manchester had breached this national and liberal standard. I may even have done the case pro bono, or certainly at a reduced fee, because it was important to stop an unjustifiable act of censorship”

Despite the court victory, Britton and Butterworth did not capitalise on their book’s cult status.

The title – a reference to wartime traitor William Joyce, known as Lord Haw-Haw – set the tone for a book whose very premise of a violent ‘alternative future’ filled with extermination camps, was likely to offend the vast majority of the British public.

Butterworth, now a 63-year-old grandfather, admits that the pair deliberately courted controversy by taking on the most unpalatable of subjects – namely, the Holocaust – in the most extreme way possible.

He added: “The character of Lord Horror is anti-Semitic. It is sometimes thought that we must be. But most of our readers understand there is a distinction to be drawn between authors and their characters.

“Of course, it alarms us when people think otherwise.

“We aren’t moralists. We don’t say, ‘This is satire; this is not real’. That would take away from its impact. We use absurdness and exaggeration.”

During one visit, around 5,000 copies of three novels ‘of the erotic imagination’ were taken away and destroyed.

Describing the vice squad officers who carried out the raids, the publisher claims that even mainstream newsagents were being targeted for their top shelf magazines.

He said: “They had an Eliot Ness attitude, sometimes arriving on our premises with sledgehammers.

“We had no experience of fighting or violence of any kind and didn’t sell anything we thought was dangerous or obscene.”

Savoy, now based in Withington, is very much a going concern, releasing one or two new titles a year. Lord
Horror has entered the lexicon of cult books, but remains out of print “for the simple reason that we rarely reprint anything”, explains Butterworth.

In an age where boundaries of taste and acceptability have expanded beyond expectation, does the writer feel that his book would be published today?

“Probably for the first time in history the internet has given ordinary people a voice that cannot be manipulated by moral crusaders.

“But I wouldn’t like to predict that a book will never be banned in the UK again. The obscenity laws can still be used, however antiquated.”

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