Crying all the way to the bank: Liberace v Cassandra & Daily Mirror Revel Barker

Revel Barker, £15.99

It was the titanic clash between bluff, folksy 1940s British decency and glitzy, globetrotting 1950s celebrity, played out in the High Court in London. Guess who won.

In its way, the 1959 libel action by the then world’s highest-paid entertainer, Liberace (pictured), against the western world's largest-selling newspaper, the Daily Mirror, was as pivotal as the following year’s Lady Chatterley trial.

The Mirror fought the action in the confidence that its star columnist Cassandra’s assault on the ‘fruit-flavoured, mincing’ Liberace was fair comment and that any English jury would agree.

They reckoned without the jury appeal of a celeb who could fill the Albert Hall night after night, and without the mastery of his leading barrister, 73-year-old Sir Gilbert Beyfus QC. The Old Fox, with his disconcerting twitch and habit of cupping hand over bad ear, demanding damaging testimony be repeated, devastated the Mirror’s journalists.

His cross-examinations and brilliant closing speech are the highlights of Revel Barker’s account, based largely on court transcripts, and had me barking with laughter.

The Mirror went down for record damages, and, ever since, reporters and columnists have known that they face libel juries at their peril.

Today, journalists take solace from the suspicion that Liberace, who died of Aids in 1987, was perjuring himself in denying that, in Mr Justice Salmon’s terminology, he was a ‘homosexualist’. But under English libel law, the jury's verdict was surely the right one. And, 50 years on, celebs are still crying all the way to the bank.

Michael Cross is a freelance journalist and acting news editor of the Law Society Gazette