At his local library branch Joe Orton is enraged to find out that they don’t have a copy of Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.  In retaliation for this grave injustice he and Kenneth Halliwell begin a multi-year campaign of stealing books from the library, artfully doctoring them, then smuggling them back to their rightful places on the shelves.  Eventually the police and the local law clerk deploy undercover agents and a sting operation in order to entrap them and Joe and Ken are sentenced to 6-month in jail. Ostensibly, its for their crimes against the library but really, as Joe puts it, “it was because we were queers.”  While inside, Orton is finally separated from Halliwell and from any remaining desire to fit in.  The result is liberating, particularly to his writing...