So we should, but there is no sign that the fear of intimidation will lift in the foreseeable future. The best evidence I can think of to convince doubters of the dangers of what the judiciary are attempting is the astonished reaction of foreign observers to English censorship. They do not shrug their shoulders and say that the press is the author of its own misfortunes. They protest and say they cannot believe that a country they once regarded as a defender of liberty can tolerate censorship.

The case that turned the English libel law from a local scandal into a global cause célèbre was brought by Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz, a Saudi banker, against the New York author Rachel Ehrenfeld. Her book on terrorism, Funding Evil, had not even been published or publicised in Britain. A few copies had arrived here via Amazon, however, and that was enough for Mr Justice Eady to order her to pulp her work and pay hefty costs and damages.

I am only able to tell you what the case was about without getting Standpoint sued because, to the regret of all the London lawyers he enriched, bin Mahfouz died after a heart attack in August, and the dead can't sue — not even in England. He was an appalling man, whom the New York Authorities fined $225 million for his part in the collapse of the fantastically corrupt Bank of Credit and Commerce International in the early 1990s. An inquiry in Dublin found that he had then bought Irish citizenship for himself and 10 members of his family over lunch with Charles Haughey, the greatest crook in recent Irish politics. By his own admission, his charity funded al-Qaeda but only, he insisted, when it was fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. Anyone who challenged that assertion or looked at whether money had passed through his Saudi bank to extremists was met with a writ and the prospect of a horrendously expensive libel case. I am not allowed to describe the contents of the book in my own words, so I will leave the task to the Labour MP Denis MacShane, who said under the protection of Parliamentary privilege: 

"Funding Evil examined the flow of money towards extremist organisations that preach the ideology of hate associated with Wahabism and other democracy-denying aspects of fundamentalist Islamic ideology. It is not exactly a secret that a great deal of the money that has financed fundamentalist extremist organisations that support jihad has come from Saudi Arabia. Ms Ehrenfeld's book, which was published in America, not Britain, named a Saudi billionaire called Mr Khalid bin Mahfouz. Although the book was published in the United States, and was not on sale in any British bookshop, he found lawyers to sue in Britain. A British judge imposed a fine and costs on Ms Ehrenfeld, and said that her book should be destroyed, even though she was not in the court. No American court would have entertained such overt censorship.

"The fullest examination is vital of those raising money, sometimes ostensibly for charitable work, but which ends up promoting fundamentalist ideology that scrambles young men's and boys' minds and leads them to become terrorists. There is no freedom of expression in Saudi Arabia, so it is the duty of others to expose what is happening. With the help of British libel lawyers, Mr Mahfouz has launched 33 suits against those who are investigating this important area of public concern. Cambridge University Press was obliged to pulp its book, Alms for Jihad, written by Robert Collins and J. Millard Burr, rather than face a libel action. What is happening when Cambridge University Press, not some odd little obsessive publishing house, but one of the flowers of British publishing for centuries, has to pulp a book because British courts will not uphold freedom of expression?"