Censored

By Aoife BhreatnachSociety & Culture Arts Books History

Censored episodes

May 27, 2021 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.

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24 min
May 13, 2021 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?
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33 min
April 29, 2021 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.

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34 min
April 15, 2021 Mollocking: Gibbon 'Cold Comfort Farm' (1932)
How could this delicious literary parody be described as indecent? Only the Irish censors saw something nasty in a comic take on DH Lawrence and Jane Austen.
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32 min
March 18, 2021 Fecundshite: Joyce 'Ulysses' (1922)
James Joyce went way beyond smut when he wrote Ulysses, an epic modernist masterpiece. The censorship history of Ulysses is as mind boggling as the author’s bloody-minded determination to offend. In a bizarre twist, this filthy book was never banned in Ireland.
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51 min
March 11, 2021 Unsuitable for Irish: bold books as Gaeilge
The scrutiny of the censor was confined to the English language. But work in Irish, the other language of the state, were also censored by editors, bureaucrats and catholic reactionaries. No language was allowed to explore scandalous ‘sex feelings’.
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41 min
March 04, 2021 The McGahern Affair Part 2, the scandal
Outrage over banned books was rare but this scandal had it all: a persecuted artist, overbearing clerics and legal reform. The Dark (1965) was a powerful book that helped change the censorship system.
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37 min
February 25, 2021 The McGahern Affair Part 1, the Book
When The Dark was banned in 1965, John McGahern became the focus of a censorship controversy. But what about this coming-of-age novel irked the censors?
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43 min
February 18, 2021 Sexual Inversion: Hall 'The Well of Loneliness' (1928)
Hall's queer text was at the centre of an English moral panic and censorship show trial. Why did the Irish censor prohibit a book that was effectively banned in Ireland anyway?
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36 min
February 11, 2021 Too critical: O'Brien 'The Land of Spices' (1941)
A censor called this book ‘unwholesome’ in parliament because it mentioned ‘sodomy’. But maybe O’Brien’s pointed criticism of nationalism was the real reason it was banned.
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42 min