Sir, - It is 13 years since I first learned that erotic literature was openly on sale in Dublin bookshops. I was late in learning this. The book that opened my eyes (wide) was published by Futura, and it was called: Erotic Interludes: Tales Told By Women. Uniformly, the writing in this book was excellent, but the content was, to me, surprisingly explicit. I was pleased for Dublin, coming, as I do, from a place where pickets are mounted outside theatres by people who don't go to the theatre, and books are attacked in the press by people who read very few works of literature.
But now the Republic has gone and sneezed over the visitor's porridge with the ridiculous ban on In Dublin. Worse, the banning body is the child of a parent called the Committee on Evil Literature. Hardly cosmopolitan, I'd say.
I see where the police are stopping cars by the hundred in Dublin city. I'm ready with my opening line, if they stop me: "I've never even read In Dublin, Sorr." - Yours, etc.,
Sam McAughtry, Chairman, Irish Writers' Union, Parnell Square, Dublin 1.