she saw as being rooted in the Christian tradition—despite the fact that she was herself agnostic. O'Brien wrote a political travelogue, Farewell Spain, to gather support for the leftist cause in the Spanish Civil War, and it has been argued that she was close to anarchism in the 1930s. She also wrote a travelogue My Ireland (1962), where she offers a lively and engaging record of the places in Ireland that she loved (such as Connemara) or did not impress her (such as Dublin). A feminist, her novels promoted gender equality and were mostly protagonised by young women yearning for independence. Kate O'Brien's determination to encourage a greater understanding of sexual difference — several of her books include positive gay/lesbian characters —, make her a pioneer in queer literary representation. O'Brien was herself lesbian, and had a number of relationships with women, including the novelist E.M. Delafield, and the artist Mary O'Neill, who has been described as her 'life partner'. She was very critical of conservatism in Ireland, and the banning of her books highlighted the absurdity of the Irish censorship laws. Following a debate on the banning of The Land of Spices in the Irish senate, and a campaign supported by Seán Ó Faoláin and others, the censorship laws were somewhat reformed in 1946 by creating an Appeals Board. The Land of Spices which had been banned in 1941 was 'unbanned' in 1949, but Mary Lavelle was never officially 'unbanned'. In this way, O'Brien helped bring to an end the cultural restrictions of the 1930s and 40s in the country. She lived much of her life in England and died in Faversham, near Canterbury, in 1974. At the time of her death, she was poor and most of her books were out of print. In the 1980s, her work was recovered by feminist scholars and reprinted by feminist publishers such as Arlen House in Dublin and Virago in London. She is now considered to be a major twentieth century Irish writer. Legacy The Glucksman Library at the University of Limerick holds an important collection of O'Brien's writings. In August 2005, Penguin reissued her final novel, As Music and Splendour (1958), which had been out of print for decades. The Limerick Literary Festival in honour of Kate O’Brien (formerly the Kate O'Brien Weekend), takes place in Limerick every year, attracting academic and non-academic audiences. In the classic film Brief Encounter