Fifty years ago one of the most extraordinary libel trials of all time took place in Britain. The flamboyant American entertainer Liberace had sued the Daily Mirror columnist William Connor (who wrote under the byline Cassandra) for implying that he was homosexual.

Connor wrote that Liberace was "...the summit of sex - the pinnacle of masculine, feminine, and neuter. Everything that he, she, and it can ever want... a deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavoured, mincing, ice-covered heap of mother love."

(Two important contextual facts: male homosexuality was then illegal; the word "gay" had not become an antonym for homosexual).

After a six-day hearing, during which Liberace denied being homosexual or ever having taken part in homosexual acts, the jury found for him. He was awarded a then-record £8,000 in damages (about £500,000 in today's money).

As Liz Hodgkinson pointed out in yesterday's Media Guardian, the decision centred largely on whether Connor knowingly used the term "fruit", which was American slang for a "homosexualist" (to use the description favoured throughout the case).

The whole trial has been resurrected by the former Daily Mirror journalist, Revel Barker, who now runs the gentlemenranters.com website, in a new book, Crying all the way to the bank (to be published 8 June, by Revel Barker Publishing).

He and Vera Baird QC have done a fine job in selecting key passages of evidence, and it is eye-opening stuff in many respects. The most obvious factor is the Mirror's arrogance, as shown during the cross-examinations of Connor and the Mirror's editorial chief, Hugh Cudlipp.

Baird observes that the Mirror "didn't seem to have a plan for the trial." Cudlipp and Connor were going up against a man who was phenomenally popular with the public at the time. Their chances of victory were slim to start with and grew thinner with each passing day.

The case should have been settled, in Liberace's favour, well before it ever reached court. But Cudlipp was convinced, not least by the Mirror's rising popularity, that he could win a case largely based on hypocrisy (that Connor did not mean what it is obvious he did mean).

Liberace was also hypocritical because he was gay, though he always denied it. He died, aged 67 in 1987, of an Aids-related illness.

Barker's book has fascinating moments for journalists, not least the lengthy questioning of Cudlipp by Liberace's counsel, Gilbert Beyfus QC, in which he attempts to trap the Mirror supremo into admitting that his sensational, risk-taking paper was reckless.

The questions, including those from the judge, Mr Justice Salmon, reek with middle class distaste for popular journalism. There is more than an echo of the attitude displayed in a previous libel case involving the Daily Mirror, in 1947.

This action was foolishly brought by a Mirror photographer (at the suggestion of his employers) against an obscure legal magazine. It rebounded badly on the paper, which lost the action. The details can be found in Privacy and the press by H. Montgomery Hyde.

What both cases illustrate is that as long ago as the 1940s and 50s, newspapers were losing out in libel actions, partly due to prejudice from the judiciary and definitely due to hostility from the public.