Sketch by Feliks Topolski in pen and ink and pencil showing a scene from a production of Early Morning by Edward Bond (b.1943) at the Royal Court Theatre in 1969.

The Royal Court Theatre was committed to producing plays which challenged the artistic, social and political orthodoxy of the day and throughout the 1960s regularly came into conflict with the Lord Chamberlain Office. Until 1968 The Lord Chamberlain's Office acted as the official censor of the London stage as the 1843 Theatres Act required all scripts to be submitted to, and approved by, the Lord Chamberlain who could prohibt the performance of any plays which theatrened "the preservation of good manners, decorum or of the public peace".

Early Morning was a controversial surreal play set in a version of Victorian England in which Queen Victoria and Florence Nightingale were having a lesbian relationship, the royal Princes were Siamese twins and Disraeli and Prince Albert were plotting a coup. At the climax of the play the whole cast were damned to a cannibalistic Heaven after falling off Beachy Head. In a direct challenge to the official ban issued against the production by the Lord Chamberlain's Office, The Royal Court chose to produce the play. Within a year of the first performance the 1834 Theatres Act had been repealed and the Theatres Act of 1968 abolished censorship of the stage in Britain.

The play which was first performed in 1968 was revived in 1969. The actress Moira Redmond (1928-2006) played the role of Queen Victoria in both productions.