On 16 June 1904, Dublin writer James Joyce walked out for the first time with Nora Barnacle, who became his life partner and eventually his wife. Produced and presented by Brian Byrne for Kilcullen Diary.

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Joyce's novel Ulysses, published in 1922, was set on the same date. The epic work describes a day in the life of one Leopold Bloom, as he walks around Dublin, and drives with friends in a carriage to a funeral.

Joyce and Nora went off to Europe not too long after they started going out. They ended up spending much of their life in Trieste in Italy, and later in Zurich.

The modern Bloomsday was started in 1954 by Dublin publican and artist John Ryan, along with the novelist Brian O’Nolan otherwise famous under his pseudonyms of Flann O’Brien and Myles na gCopaleen. They, with a group of other Dublin intellectuals and writers, hired a couple of horse-drawn cabs to make a pilgrimage along the Ulysses roads and stops.

Bloomsday is strongly celebrated in Hungary, in at least 17 major cities in the United States, in Trieste and Genoa in Italy, in Sydney and Melbourne in Australia. You will also encounter sundry Leopolds and Mollys and Stephen Dedaluses today in New Zealand, Canada, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom and France.

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