Teasing: Mae West 'She Done Him Wrong' (1932)
Mae West is remembered for her cracking one-liners but she was a helluva writer too. Guest: Dr Muireann O’Cinnéide. Her sexual persona that she creates in the film She Done Him Wrong means the Irish ...
25 Maj 202348min
Radical: Ethel Mannin 'Confessions and Impressions' (1930)
A prolific novelist and memoirist, Ethel Mannin cleverly smuggled lots of controversial ideas into this best-selling autobiography.Freud’s influence on Mannin is clear at various points in the book be...
11 Maj 202333min
Sensational: Roberta Cowell's Story, by herself (1954)
Written by a woman (and her ghost writer) hiding in an Italian villa to escape the paparazzi, this is a short, sometimes shocking memoir. This is a type of celebrity memoir, a text written by someone...
27 Apr 202323min
Intimate: Reitman 'Sister of the Road' (1937)
Let Box-Car Bertha show you the American underworld, where the homeless and rootless struggle to survive. An uncensored story that, unsurprisingly, was censored. In the publishing landscape of the mi...
13 Apr 202327min
Dot, Dot, Dot: Anon., WAAC: the Woman's Story of the War (1930)
One of many books about the First World War on the censor’s blacklist, this one claims to offer a new, fresh perspective about the British army. But how much truth can a memoir written by ‘anonymous’ ...
30 Mars 202340min
Gunning for you: Frank Harris 'My Life and Loves' (1922)
Written by an old man reflecting on his life in sex, this notorious memoir was banned almost everywhere. It’s nice to know I’m not the imagined reader of this book – wrong gender, wrong gonadsHarris t...
16 Mars 202326min
Skeptical: Sean O'Casey 'I Knock at the Door' (1939)
What happens when an Irishman whose dramas offended audiences writes an autobiography? The state censors ban it. One censor asked: are you going to allow the truth to be told about everything to ever...
2 Mars 202334min
Subterfuge: Exchange and Mart magazine (1930)
A deep dive into the wonderful world of classified advertisements. You could buy nearly anything through Exchange and Mart: dogs, chickens, clothing. But if you look very closely, you can see why the ...
2 Feb 202326min
