For the first time on the podcast, it’s a publication that’s still banned in Ireland! According to Register of Prohibited Publications, Health and Efficiency is ‘unwholesome literature’. Naturally, we want to know precisely how this magazine is corrupting and degrading its readers. With Prof Annebella Pollen.
S3 E5 Unzipped! Collins, ‘The Stud’ (1969)
This is a silly rather than sexy book. Why on earth was such a trashy, ridiculous banned when the censor ignored sex in serious literature?
S3 E3 Such badness: Hoult, ‘There were no windows’ (1944)
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.
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.
