The lasting legacy of a literary giant

WE’RE great men and women on the Ould Sod for lionising our literary giants without knowing the first thing about them.

With most of them banned before breakfast in Ireland during their lifetimes and preferring to live and work in exile, it was often only foreign acclaim that alerted us to our clutch of Nobel Prize winners.

And while some of us (rabid Joyceans from the crib) cluck disapprovingly at the tourist fiesta that passes for Bloomsday - ‘of course, de bould Jemmy wud be spinnin’ in de grave!’ - in private, we’ll take the first page of Ulysses over a fistful of sleeping tablets any day.