An Irishman’s Diary on how Alex Comfort’s joy of poetry was a blow against censorship

His particular fame weighed like an albatross around the neck of Dr Alex Comfort. This genial Englishman was an accomplished medical doctor, a psychiatrist who played a pioneering role in the development of gerontology, the study of ageing. He was also a highly accomplished scientist.

Alex was a social and political activist too. He was 19 when the second World War broke out. As a medical student he was exempt from conscription, yet he declared himself a conscientious objector, made speeches and wrote articles against participation in the war. He described himself as a “militant pacifist”, and, after the war, was one of the founders of the CND, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. His pacifism was an extension of his philosophical anarchism, and he wrote a number of commentaries on society and the pathology of power.

As if he needed another activity, Alex was also a very fine writer, and maintained a steady output of novels, stories, and collections of poetry, to complement his tomes on science, medicine, mathematics, and philosophy.

Yet it was for one book, The Joy of Sex, that Dr Alex Comfort became a household name and a multi-millionaire.

He recognised the need at the time, 1972, for a handbook or guide to lovemaking.

As a medical doctor and psychiatrist, he envisaged it first as a psychotherapy textbook. But then he thought of turning it into a readable handbook for the general public.

Such was the wit and style of Alex Comfort, such was his warm understanding of human nature, that the book sold by the million, and is still selling today, more than 40 years later.

The Joy of Sex was banned here by the Censorship of Publications Board when it first appeared in 1972. After the censorship reforms of 1967, the board had been in steady retreat. But it wasn't a surprise that this frank book with its explicit illustrations was more than they were ready for yet.

However, it came as a shock when it was re-banned in 1987, alongside a new novel by Angela Carter, The Passion of New Eve, and a volume of erotic art. This salvo from the Censorship Board seemed to say, "we haven't gone away, you know".

I had set up the Irish Writers' Union just a few months earlier, and here was a challenge we could not ignore. The feeling among writers was that some new personnel on the board were determined to reassert some of the old values. One of our leading barristers undertook pro bono to mount a court challenge to the constitutionality of the board's procedures. However he could do so only on behalf of the affected authors or publishers.

The poet Robert Greacen said to me, “I know Alex Comfort. He is an old friend of mine. He was a medical intern in the Rotunda in the Forties. And by the way he is a very fine poet.”

Exactly what I needed, or so I thought. When I phoned Dr Comfort, he listened to me with evident warmth and sympathy. Then he delivered his response: “The English interfered in the affairs of Ireland far too long. And I have too much respect for the Irish to go over there now and start telling you what to do. I have total confidence in your ability to sort out this matter for yourselves.” Ouch. I wasn’t expecting that.

However, even over the phone, I felt we had established a cordial link, so I tried another ploy.

“Robert tells me you were part of the literary scene in Dublin when you were here in the Forties. Would you be interested in coming over to give a poetry reading?”

“I would be delighted to give a poetry reading in Dublin,” he replied without hesitation.

So Alex came to Dublin for a reading in Buswells Hotel. We circulated the media, of course, and they turned up in droves.

Alex gave a stunning reading of his poetry, laced with references to his pacifism, to mathematics and quantum physics, to Sligo where he always experienced a spiritual hotspot in the ground. But not a word about sex. The packed audience was engrossed in this virtuoso presentation of enormous erudition. And of course the media gave the whole event major coverage, headlining the banning of his book.

We achieved our objective. The bans were revoked shortly afterwards, and the Censorship Board went to ground again.

Alex Comfort was generous in giving us this hand-up because, as he told me afterwards, he had by then come to despise the very book that made him rich and famous. He reflected on his vast output of books on medicine, science, and philosophy, his novels, his collections of poetry. Yet his name was linked inextricably to a handbook he had produced without much thought, The Joy of Sex.

He died in the year 2000 at the age of 80. So in Ireland let us remember him as a philosopher and poet.

Let us remember too that he helped us to put a stake finally through the ghoul of Irish literary censorship.