An entertaining and elegant look at singledom in London that challenged censor’s ideas on sex and conception.
S4 E5 Original Sin: Spark ‘The Bachelors’ (1960)
S3 E8 Satanic Love Triangle: Mannin, ‘Lucifer and the Child’ (1947)
What happens when a child meets a horned man in a dark forest? A books that explores the nature of evil and decides that sex isn’t the problem.
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.
S2 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.
S1 E4 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?
