When The Dark was banned in 1965, John McGahern became the focus of a censorship controversy. But what about this coming-of-age novel irked the censors?
S4 E8 The McGahern Affair Part 1, the Book
S4 E7 Sexual inversion: Hall ‘The Well of Loneliness’ (1928)
Hall’s queer text was at the centre of a moral panic and censorship show trial in England. Why did the Irish censor ban it, when an English prohibition meant Irish booksellers couldn’t source the book?
S4 E3 Hex & Sex: Smith ‘The Passionate Witch’ (1942)
Only a truly paranoid censor would ban a book this innocuous. But even barely there smut can give convent-school girls ideas…
