April 29 – Peter Weiss's play with music Die Verfolgung und Ermordung Jean Paul Marats dargestellt durch die Schauspielgruppe des Hospizes zu Charenton unter Anleitung des Herrn de Sade ("The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade", known as Marat/Sade) premieres at the Schiller Theater in West Berlin. In August it receives its English-language premiere by the Royal Shakespeare Company in London at the Aldwych Theatre.[3]
June 22 – Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer is allowed to circulate legally in the United States by the U.S. Supreme Court three decades after its original publication in France, after the U.S. Supreme Court, in Grove Press, Inc. v. Gerstein, cites Jacobellis v. Ohio (which is decided the same day) and overrules state court findings that the book is obscene.[5]
August 11 – Ian Fleming walks to the Royal St George's Golf Club in Canterbury, Kent, for lunch and later dines at his hotel with friends, collapsing shortly afterwards with a heart attack.[6] His last recorded words are an apology to the ambulance drivers for having inconvenienced them, saying "I am sorry to trouble you chaps. I don't know how you get along so fast with the traffic on the roads these days." Fleming dies next day.
October 28 – The Wednesday Play debuts on BBC1 television in the United Kingdom, presenting original one-off contemporary social drama, mostly written for television.
Jean-Paul Sartre becomes head of the Organization to Defend Iranian Political Prisoners (ODIPP).
W. H. Auden describes his "Vision of Agape" (June 1933) in his preface to the anthology The Protestant Mystics.
