logo
episode-header-image
Jun 2022
8m 58s

James Joyce and Ulysses

Bbc World Service
About this episode

This year is the 100th anniversary of Ulysses by James Joyce, a landmark modernist novel and one of the most influential works of the 20th century. Ulysses is the story of one day in the life of a young Irishman in Dublin; that day, June the 16th, is now known as Bloomsday. To mark Bloomsday, Simon Watts brings together the memories of some of Joyce’s friends, as recorded in the BBC archives. The programme was first broadcast in 2012.

PHOTO: James Joyce in 1930 (Roger Viollet via Getty Images)

Up next
Today
The creation of the International Criminal Court
In 1998, at a conference organised by the United Nations, a blueprint was devised for what would be the world's first permanent International Criminal Court.Judge Phillipe Kirsch chaired the Rome conference that led to the formation of the court. He tells Gill Kearsley about the ... Show More
10m 23s
Aug 22
Geneva Conventions
In 1859, Swiss businessman Henry Dunant witnessed the Battle of Solferino, in Italy. He couldn’t believe the lack of aid for the wounded soldiers and came up with two ideas – a voluntary aid organisation and an international treaty to protect those injured in wartime. They went o ... Show More
10m 2s
Aug 21
The rise and fall of BlackBerry
In the early 2000s, BlackBerry was the phone that ruled the world. But within a decade, it collapsed, overtaken by the touch screen revolution.Sam Gruet speaks to former co-CEO Jim Balsillie about BlackBerry’s meteoric rise, its battle against Apple, and the moment he knew it was ... Show More
9m 50s
Recommended Episodes
Jun 2012
James Joyce's Ulysses
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss James Joyce's novel Ulysses. First published ninety years ago in Paris, Joyce's masterpiece is a sprawling and startlingly original work charting a single day in the life of the Dubliner Leopold Bloom. Some early readers were outraged by its se ... Show More
42m 5s
Nov 2023
Oh Man, James Joyce was a Dirty Dude!
James Joyce is, without question, one of the most famous authors in the English language. Millions of readers have enjoyed (and sometimes struggled with) his groundbreaking novels and short stories. However... that's not all Joyce wrote. In today's episode, Ben, Noel and Max expl ... Show More
42m 11s
Nov 2009
Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Melvyn Bragg and guests Roy Foster, Jeri Johnson and Katherine Mullin discuss A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce's groundbreaking 1916 novel about growing up in Catholic Ireland.Many novelists choose their own young life as the subject for their first book. But ... Show More
42m 19s
Dec 2017
122 Young James Joyce
We often think of James Joyce as a man in his thirties and forties, a monkish, fanatical, eyepatch-wearing author, trapped in his hovel and his own mind, agonizing over his masterpieces, sentence by sentence, word by laborious word. But young James Joyce, the one who studied lite ... Show More
1h 5m
Jun 2022
Cambodian genocide trials
In 2009, Rob Hamill testified in the trial of Comrade Duc, who ran the notorious Tuol Sleng prison during the Cambodian genocide. Josephine McDermott spoke to him. It is 50 years since Kim Phuc's village in Vietnam was bombed with napalm. The photograph of her, running burned fro ... Show More
51m 28s
Aug 2023
D. J. Taylor, "Orwell: The New Life" (Pegasus Books, 2023)
A fascinating exploration of George Orwell--and his body of work--by an award-winning Orwellian biographer and scholar, presenting the author anew to twenty-first-century readers.We find ourselves in an era when the moment is ripe for a reevaluation of the life and the works of o ... Show More
46m 29s
Mar 2023
The Fart Letters of James Joyce
James Joyce was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He was a part of the avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century. He also delighted in the sounds and smells of his beloved wife, Nora Barnacle's farts. ... Show More
23m 24s
Jan 2022
Thomas Hardy's Poetry
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Hardy (1840 -1928) and his commitment to poetry, which he prized far above his novels. In the 1890s, once he had earned enough from his fiction, Hardy stopped writing novels altogether and returned to the poetry he had largely put aside sinc ... Show More
50m 43s
Jan 2022
Thomas Hardy's Poetry
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Hardy (1840 -1928) and his commitment to poetry, which he prized far above his novels. In the 1890s, once he had earned enough from his fiction, Hardy stopped writing novels altogether and returned to the poetry he had largely put aside sinc ... Show More
50m 43s