Penguin

Penguin has a long and proud history of championing free speech.

In the 1960's Penguin was at the forefront of a revolution in popular culture with the publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover. Penguin was charged under the Obscene Publications Act but fought back and was acquitted, marking a turning point in British censorship laws. More recently, Penguin successfully defended a libel suit brought by revisionist historian David Irving, after the publication of Professor Deborah Lipstadt's Denying the Holocaust. The company also published Michael Moore's Stupid White Men in the UK in 2000, after attempts to ban it in the US.

Penguin is delighted to be a Silver PEN partner in the UK and was the proud sponsor of the 2009 PEN World Voices festival in New York.

Tom Weldon, Deputy CEO of Penguin UK, says,

'There is perhaps no more important an issue in publishing than the author's right to freedom of expression and the work PEN carries out to protect this right is extraordinarily valuable.  Penguin is very proud of our support of PEN over the years and we are now delighted to become a Silver PEN Partner.'

John Makinson

John Makinson joins English PEN Panel
In the first of our autumn season of events, and the first at our new home at the Free Word Centre on Farringdon Road, John Makinson, CEO of the Penguin Group, joined a lively panel debate asking What are Words Worth? The panel, which also included Lemn Sissay, Artist in residence at the South Bank Centre, Antonia Byatt, Director of Literature Strategy at Arts Council England, and Graham Henderson, Chief Executive of Poet in the City, discussed what role the ‘creative economy’ plays in the UK economy as a whole, whether it is possible to measure the contribution that literature makes to society, and how writers might be rewarded in a world of diminishing margins.