Being denied access to any opinion loses us more than we can know. As John Stuart Mill explained in On Liberty, we have to be able to hear the whole range of opinion for two primary reasons. First, because what is kept from us may be true or contain a portion of truth. Second, because if we allow our opinions to go unchallenged our truth risks divorce from its rational roots, becoming a dogma too feeble to be sustained.

In the past month, Britain has seen two examples of censorship that warrant the sounding of the siren of Mill.

First, we saw the alleged attempted firebombing of the home of a London publisher who had been due to bring out The Jewel of Medina. This debut novel by Sherry Jones — which Gibson Square offered to publish after it was dropped by Random House — focuses on the relationship between Islam’s prophet and his favourite and youngest wife, Aisha.

In the wake of this incident, the novel’s publication has now been dropped a second time. Any but the most determined British readers, who may obtain copies from Serbia and other countries willing to publish the book, will now be unable to judge the book’s contents for themselves.

So what is the loss here? The truth is that it had begun even before the book was cancelled, indeed ever since Denise Spellberg, an associate professor at the University of Texas, who was sent the work objected to it on the basis that it took “sacred history” and turned it into “soft-core pornography”. This has now become the standard line of criticism of the work’s unread contents.