Choice Joyce

Joyce-mania a go-go at the Chester Beatty library when an early draft of Ulysses comes to Ireland for the first time. Penned in Trieste, Zurich and Paris, the sprawling, handwritten manuscript resides at Philadelphia's Rosenbach museum. Curator Mike Barsanti explains how text drifted across Europe and the US through the early 1920s and 1930s, eventually ending up in Philadelphia in the possession of philanthropist A.S.W. Rosenbach. Noted Joyce buffs in the house include UCD English professor Terence Browne, and Price Waterhouse Cooper senior partner John Blake Dillon. Grandson Stephen James Joyce has come from France and is trading jocularities with Tom Hardiman, chair of the board of trustees at the Chester Beatty and chancellor of Dublin City University. The US contingent is fronted by Rosenbach trustees chair, the exotically monikered Sheldon Hackney, and includes honorary British consul to Philadelphia Oliver Franklin (top names, chaps).