How did a subtle, refined war novel earn a ban? Perhaps the faeces and war crimes were more offensive than the barely-there sex.
S3 E6 War is hell: Boell, ‘And where were you, Adam?’ (1951)
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 E5 Joseph Heller, ‘Catch-22’ (1961)
An instant bestseller in Britain, ‘Catch-22’ was banned in Ireland from 1962 to 1974. There’s lots of sex in this book but the first sentence was the reason it was banned.
