Salon: Banned in Britain! (House of Bush, House of Saud)

[kskiska]

Fearful of Saudi lawsuits, the British publisher of "House of Bush, House of Saud" has backed down from issuing the book.

A controversial new book that casts a critical eye on the three-decade-old relationship between the Bush and Saud families, "House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties," by Craig Unger, has been dropped by its British publisher just weeks before it was scheduled to arrive in stores. Making its decision in the shadow of the aggressive use of the British legal system and its plaintiff-friendly libel laws by wealthy Saudis, the publisher has backed down from issuing the book.

"We've had to withdraw it for legal reasons," says an editor at Secker & Warburg, a U.K. division of Random House. "We expected we would be able to publish it with a degree of risk. But regrettably in the final analysis we decided we could not."

"Essentially it's been quashed," says author Craig Unger. Scribner published the book in the United States on March 16. (Shortly before that, Salon ran exclusive excerpts from the book.)

Unger's literary agent Elizabeth Sheinkman stresses the decision had nothing to do with the book's quality and that Secker & Warburg editors "were very excited about" the manuscript. "But they were concerned that it could be very costly for them," she says. "In the process of having it legally vetted they were ultimately advised it would be dangerous to publish the book. Or rather, the likelihood of Random House being sued by the Saudis was too likely for them to go forward."

more…
http://salon.com/news/feature/2004/03/23/unger_ban/index.html

[Pale_Rider]

1. As the Bible is smuggled into China ...

... let the "House of Bush, House of Saud" be smuggled into the UK.

[KissMyAsscroft]

2. Good...

Makes people want it more.

[Democat]

3. Have they considered changing British libel law?

For a Western country, they don't seem to protect free speech as much as they should.

[Art_from_Ark]

4. It seems pretty messed up

They are alowed write anything they want to about their own royal family, but yet they let themselves be pushed around by "royalty" from another country?