Was it literature or porn? With sex on nearly every page, it wasn’t surprising this Irish novel was banned for decades. Sebastian Dangerfield is as dirty and unwashed as he is filthy minded.
3. Pure filth: JP Donleavy, ‘The Ginger Man’ (1955)
2. Thrusting Ecstasy: Anais Nin, ‘A Spy in the House of Love’ (1954)
If you like florid descriptions of sex spiced with psychoanalysis, this is the book for you. Unfortunately, it is not my kind of book.
S2 E1: A lot of ridin’: Keane, ‘Two Days in Aragon’ (1942)
A Big House novel where ordered tennis parties are subverted by fucking in the fields and bondage in the basement. You’d never think it from the cover, would you?
10. Murdoch, ‘The Flight from the Enchanter’ (1956): Freaky Foreigners
Why is so hard to find sex in a book saturated with sex? Trigger-happy censors overestimated the filth in this rich and inventive novel.
8. Orrie Hitt, ‘Pleasure Ground’ (1961): Babes and Boobs
With a saucy cover showing lots of female flesh, Hitt’s book was never going to be sold in Ireland. But did the text deliver on the smutty promise of the cover art?
7. ‘The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk’ (1836)
Why would a censor in 1964 worry about a book published more than a century earlier? Perhaps a Gothic horror story featuring fornicating nuns and priests was just too much. Or maybe this historical curiosity was packed in a racy, titillating cover?
4. Kathleen Winsor, ‘Forever Amber’ (1944)
Forever Amber is the original bonkbuster, whose commercial success led to Peyton Place (1956) and Riders (1985).
Banned in Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and Massachusetts as indecent, it sold millions of copies in the 1940s. Restoration England was the perfect backdrop for a lush, romantic romp but does the book deliver smut galore?
1. Brendan Behan, ‘Borstal Boy’: solitary comforts
What shenanigans did Brendan Behan get up to in prison and borstal between 1939 and 1941? He enjoyed baiting the Brits, warm cocoa, snuggly blankets and … other things.
In episode one, I’ll tell you about the rude bits in a book whose banning in Ireland and Australia provoked derision.
