It was meant to be a quiet reading by an author who had bought a new suit to look smart for the occasion. But the event in Borders bookshop in the centre Oxford turned into farce when the management called the police, who arrived in three squad cars.
Eight officers escorted the author and his audience from the shop, which said they were trespassing. Elizabeth Wilkinson, a freelance editor who had travelled from Kent, was furious. "It was one of the most outrageous and disturbing scenes I have ever witnessed in this country and a monstrous violation of free speech," she said.
Another member of the audience, Professor John Marshall, a neurologist at John Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, said that he had telephoned the shop on the morning of the reading to check that it was going ahead. "It was all very Pinteresque, the idea of having a small group discussing philosophical texts being removed by the police is extremely bizarre," he said.