IN 1960 the so-called Lady Chatterley trial allowed the publication of DH Lawrence’s explicit 1928 novel of forbidden love between a gentlewoman and her gardener.

Few people realise that Swindon, ever the pioneer, had a similar controversy six years earlier.

It was at least as silly as the furore over Lady Chatterley’s Lover, but involved a book written in the 14th Century.

The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio, regarded as a classic of early Italian fiction, consists of 100 stories told by a group of men and women fleeing the Black Death.

Some of the stories are erotic, and that was enough to bring the police to a Mrs Elsie Foulds’ bookshop in Commercial Road.

Swindon magistrates, deciding the two-volume edition was obscene, ordered its destruction, and Mrs Foulds’ appeal was heard in September of 1954 in Trowbridge.

JT Molony QC, for the Crown, recited the titles of some other books displayed in the shop, whose destruction had also been ordered.

He added: “Those who wanted dirty books would probably satisfy themselves they had found the right place when they saw those titles.

“In this place [...] these books could have been put only in order to attract people who were looking for obscene literature.

“In that setting they were likely to fall into the hands only of those who were looking.”

At one point, Mr Molony said it would be acceptable for the book to be available in a library for students of Italian literature, but not in Mrs Foulds’ shop.

The barrister seems to have had certain attitudes in common with the one at the Chattlerley trial who infamously asked the jury: “Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read?” The Foulds’ QC, a Mr J Stephenson, argued that The Decameron wouldn’t have survived for six centuries if it were nothing more than smut, and the appeal panel seems to have agreed.

That afternoon we photographed Elsie Foulds’ husband, George, putting the book back on display.

The magistrates who condemned The Decameron from the Swindon bench weren’t the first or the last in Britain to do so, but they inadvertently delivered a lasting body blow to our cultural reputation.

Years later, Swindon was still referred among certain arts bodies as the town that banned The Decameron.