Today, 16 June, was Bloomsday. I listened to the beginning and the end of a radio dramatisation of Joyce’s Ulysses, performed to mark the day. Of course, the work stands on its own two feet but I confess I got particular interest out of listening to a lightly fictionalised account of events that took place in the Martello tower I visited just over a month ago. I shall never read nor hear these lines now without remembering the place itself: ‘Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressing gown, ungirdled, was sustained gently-behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned: Introibo ad altare Dei. Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called up coarsely: Come up, Kinch. Come up, you fearful Jesuit.’