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?
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.
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.
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.
Marie Stopes’ advocacy of contraception was radial in 1918 but it was 1980 before the Irish public could read her sex manual.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
