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.
S3 E1 Voluptuous Jazzing: McKay, ‘Home to Harlem’ (1928
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
E 5: Lesbionic Lit: Highsmith, ‘Carol’ (1952)
Is it a subversive lesbian romance or a psychological thriller? The hetronormative censor saw a dangerous text with a ‘general tendency to deprave’.
4. Evil Contraception: Marie Stopes, ‘Married Love’ (1918)
Marie Stopes’ advocacy of contraception was radial in 1918 but it was 1980 before the Irish public could read her sex manual.
3. Pure filth: JP Donleavy, ‘The Ginger Man’ (1955)
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.