Hoult was banned more often than any other Irish woman writer. Only the censor’s beady eye could see filth in a novel about loneliness and dementia.
S3 E3 Such badness: Hoult, ‘There were no windows’ (1944)
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?
S1 E10 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.
S1 E1 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.
