Oz magazine

The alternative/underground magazine Oz started in Australia in 1963 and, almost by chance, came to London in 1967.

The 16-page debut issue – published on April Fools’ Day in 1963 – had a front-page hoax about the collapse of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and featured a centre spread on the history of the chastity belt and a story on abortion. It sold 6,000 copies on publication day alone.

In subsequent issues, Oz gave pioneering coverage to contentious issues such as censorship, homosexuality, police brutality, the Australian government’s White Australia policy and Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War, as well as regularly satirising public figures, including Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies.

The magazine’s radical content of libertarianism, obscenity, pornography and anti-establishment free-thinking constantly pushed at the limits of permissiveness.

The creators of Oz – Richard Neville and Martin Sharp – were prosecuted on charges of obscenity in both Australia and the UK. A 1963 charge was dealt with expeditiously when Neville, Sharp, and co-editor Richard Walsh pleaded guilty.

In two later trials – in Australia in 1964 and the UK in 1971 – the editors were acquitted on appeal, after initially being found guilty and sentenced to harsh jail terms.

The Australian publication folded in 1969, while Neville’s London co-editors Jim Anderson, Felix Dennis, and Roger Hutchinson published the British version of Oz until 1973.

Co-founder Martin Sharp died from emphysema on 1 December 2013, at the age of 71. Richard Neville passed away on 4 September 2016, aged 74.