CENSORED

September 23, 2020

S3 E1 Voluptuous Jazzing: McKay, ‘Home to Harlem’ (1928

A love letter to Harlem and it’s music, this book offended all kinds of people. McKay’s honesty about sex was brave and inflammatory.

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September 16, 2020

S3 E1 Low and Vulgar: Cross, ‘The Tailor and Ansty’ (1942)

A little book of folklore that became infamous. It was debated in parliament where nationalists denounced the elderly couple who were the subject of the book. But was the bull/cow story really that rude?

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August 27, 2020

Bonus Smut: There’s something about Mary: Donleavy, ‘The Ginger Man’ (1954)

There was too much filth for one episode, so I made another one! I needed to rant about Mary, one of the women wronged by Sebastian Dangerfield. How did Mary, a strong woman with her own bank account and coalshed, fare when she joined Dangerfield in London? There’s shagging aplenty but it’s not a happy ending.

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August 20, 2020

E10 Filth and Faeces: Beckett, ‘More Pricks than Kicks’ (1934)

A riotous, whirling, silly read that hides it’s rudeness with classical allusions and puns. The blasphemous, punning and lewd title earned it’s ban but there was a profusion of filth within.

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August 13, 2020August 13, 2020

E9 Rapey Noir: Keene, ‘Sleep with the Devil’ (1954)

The censor hated Keene’s pulp noir, banning his work many times. This taut thriller was full of violence but it was also a morality tale.

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August 5, 2020

E 8 Queer Ireland: Broderick, ‘The Pilgrimage’ (1961)

Is it a book about a promiscuous wife, a pilgrimage or queer life in 1960s Ireland? Banned for indecency and blasphemy, Broderick’s novel is a multi-layered text.

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July 31, 2020

E 7 Bestial Behaviour: Endore, ‘The Werewolf of Paris’ (1933)

Endore combined violence and blasphemy in this classic of the werewolf genre. It’s impossible to know whether the radical politics or freaky sex most offended the censor.

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July 22, 2020

E 6: Love, not Sex: Wallace, ‘The Chapman Report’ (1960)

America was horrified when the Kinsey report showed women were capable of sexual misbehaviour. Wallace’s book trashed Kinsey but it still too sexy for the Irish censor.