Squalid Glamour: Isherwood 'Goodbye to Berlin' (1939)
This fine collection of stories about the Berlin’s bohemian underclass in Berlin probably annoyed the censors. If they had read it closely, the rent boys and loose women would have given them a collec...
4 Aug 202136min
All Cork: O'Faoláin 'Bird Alone' (1936)
Seán O’Faoláin’s love letter to his homeplace, Cork city, was singled out for censorship in 1936. Being blacklisted provoked his career-long critiques of the Irish state. Was this atmospheric, sometim...
22 Juli 202152min
Teenage Rebel: Lessing 'Martha Quest (1952)
Doris Lessing's radical politics scared the government of more than one country. This semi-autobiographical novel features an angry, impatient teenager growing up amidst the racial conflict in Africa....
8 Juli 202138min
Revolutionary: Hansen and Jensen 'The Little Red Schoolbook' (1969)
This little book was so dangerous that the French, British and South African governments joined the Irish censors in banning it. The blunt honesty about sex and drugs caused a global moral panic about...
24 Juni 202131min
Girls, Girls: Mead 'Coming of Age in Samoa' (1928)
When it was published in America, this popular anthropology book made its author famous. The censors ignored it for nearly 20 years, until they banned it in 1944. Maybe they finally noticed that Mead ...
10 Juni 202144min
All the antis: Shatter 'Laura' (1989)
With unparliamentary sex and a tug-of-love legal battle, 'Laura' was a bestseller in 1989. So why on earth was it before the censors in 2013? It seemed very silly then but it appears more sinister now...
27 Maj 202123min
Phallic: Flynn 'My Wicked, Wicked Ways' (1959)
Errol Flynn embodied swashbuckling masculinity in Hollywood of the 1930s yet his dissipation killed him at 50. His memoir was marketed as salacious but how rude could it really be?Merch: http://store....
13 Maj 202132min
A New Woman: Baum 'Helene' (1928)
Baum was a bestselling author of the 1930s who attracted the ire of the Irish censors. Helene is a romance about a struggling university student with a serious feminist message. If you love Evil Liter...
29 Apr 202133min
