Genius: Isadora Duncan 'My Life' (1927)
Isadora Duncan was an artist who lived (and died) in an extraordinary manner. Her autobiography tells how she conceived a radical dance manifesto while partying across Europe.This memoir sold extremel...
19 Jan 202329min
Propaganda: Bösche ‘Jenny Lives With Eric and Martin’ (1983)
Why did a children’s picture book provoke new form of censorship in Britain? Danish attitudes to children produced books that upset other European cultures. Before Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin wa...
5 Jan 202324min
Seedy: Greene 'Stamboul Train' (1932)
A train that could whisk its passengers across borders and into each other’s arms was definitely too dangerous for the censors. With Juliette Breton. There's something quite erotic and tempting about...
24 Nov 202239min
Primitives: Macken, ‘Quench the Moon’ (1948)
When Walter Macken dedicated his first novel to his Mammy, Agnes, he did not expect the censors to declare it ‘obscene’. How does a social-problem novel by a good Catholic offend the official arbiters...
10 Nov 202231min
Seconal Days: Valley of the Dolls (1966)
Hailed as ‘Dirty Book of the Month’ by Time in 1966, this novel was an instant bestseller. But not in Ireland, where it was illegal to sell it between 1967 and 1979. What does this classic of women’s ...
27 Okt 202254min
Seductive: Gibbons 'Nightingale Wood' (1938)
This is the first banned book I’ve read that features both a foot fetish and communism. Gibbons writes satire so entrancing it’s can be hard to spot the filth but if the censors could do it, so could ...
13 Okt 20221h 4min
Thrilling: True Detective Mysteries
Hundreds of magazine titles were banned by the Irish censor. This true-crime periodical, full of murder and gangsterism, couldn’t avoid being banned for discussing crime. But advertising ‘daring’ and ...
29 Sep 202231min
