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Irish Times
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Joyce on Trial - Frank McNally on a landmark libel case of 1954
When Gerry Adams took his successful libel action against the BBC in a Dublin court recently, reader Ronan Dodd reminds me, he was following a path that had been trod as far back as the 1950s, in a landmark case involving James Joyce. Joyce was dead by then, but his writings lived on. And when BBC radio's Third Programme marked the 50th anniversary of Bloomsday with a dramatisation of Paddy Dignam's funeral, it was sued by one Reuben J Dodd Jnr, from whom Ronan is laterally descended. Reuben J Jnr had been a classmate of Joyce in Belvedere College. Unfortunately, the two did not get on, continuing a feud that originated with their fathers, Reuben J Dodd Snr and John Joyce respectively. The older Joyce borrowed money from the older Dodd in the 1890s and seems to have been quite resentful that Dodd expected it to be paid back. The younger Joyce inherited the grudge. And when writing Ulysses, one of the great literary masterpieces of 20th century, he managed to include this personal vendetta, using the protagonists' real names. READ MORE Hence he has the Dignam funeral cortege pass Dodd Snr on what is now O'Connell Street, teeing up some casual anti-semitism from the mourners (even though Dodd was a Christian). 'Of the tribe of Reuben,' says Martin Cunningham, nodding towards the footpath. His gaze is followed there by Simon Dedalus, Joyce's fictionalised father, who speaks in the direction of the 'stumping' figure: 'The devil break the hasp of your back!' A conversation on money-lending ensues. The Joyces, senior and junior, were regularly in debt. In the earlier Nestor episode of Ulysses, where the author's alter ego Stephen collects his wages as a teacher from the bigoted northern schoolmaster Mr Deasy, the theme of insolvency also features. Deasy argues that the proudest boast of any Englishman is 'I paid my way', and challenges his young teacher: 'Can you feel that? I owe nothing . Can you?' Whereupon Stephen does a quick mental reckoning: Mulligan, nine pounds, three pairs of socks, one pair brogues, ties. Curran, ten guineas. McCann, one guinea. Fred Ryan, two shillings. Temple, two lunches. Russell, one guinea. Cousins, ten shillings, Bob Reynolds, half a guinea, Kohler, three guineas, five weeks' board… For the moment, no, Stephen answered. But the immediate source of the eventual libel case was not the debt. It was a story recalled by Leopold Bloom, who is also in the funeral carriage, and who himself will later be the subject of anti-semitism (although technically not Jewish either). It was based on real events too, although they hadn't happened yet then. In most ways meticulously faithful to the Dublin of 1904, Joyce in this case backdated an incident from 1911 for the purposes of his family feud. What is beyond dispute about the events in question is that on 26th August 1911, Reuben J Dodd jumped into the River Liffey. In Ulysses, this is presented as a suicide attempt. In the 1954 case (for which the plaintiff's lawyer was a young Ulick O'Connor) Dodd argued that, on the contrary, he was just trying to save his hat, which had been blown into the river. His father, with whom he had been in conversation or argument beforehand, was nearby on the quays. But it fell to a heroic docker, Moses Goldin (an ironic name in the circumstances, since it suggests he was Jewish, although I can't find that confirmed anywhere), to drag Dood Jnr to safety. Goldin was a serial saver of lives, apparently. According to the Daily Worker, which wrote an editorial about the incident, he had rescued 'some twenty' people from similar situations. Suffering from heart problems by the time he fetched Dodd Jnr out of the water, he lived in a slum with his wife and four children, and ended up in hospital from exposure after his latest heroics. But the main point of the Daily Worker's write-up, gleefully amplified by Joyce via Bloom – wad Dodd Snr's alleged meanness. When prompted to reward the docker, he settled on a sum of two shillings and sixpence. 'Mr Dodd thinks his son is worth half-a -crown,' sneered the DW editorial. In Ulysses, this is downgraded to a 'florin' (two shillings). 'One and eightpence too much,' quips Simon Dedalus, provoking laughter in the carriage until they all remember they're at a funeral and decorum is resumed. The 1954/5 libel suit did not trouble a judge, eventually. As Joycean scholar Pat Callan writes in a paper on the subject: 'The BBC settled as it did not wish to have an Irish court determine if a potential libel was committed at the point of reception or the point of transmission.' Dodd Jnr thereby became the only character in Ulysses to win a case for defamation arising from the novel. Joyce had died 13 years earlier. But while alive, he knew that in Ulysses he had given certain hostages to fortune. That may be one of the reasons why, after leaving Dublin in 1912, he never again came home.
Irish Times
21-05-2025
- Business
- Irish Times
Landmark O'Connell Street bank building guiding at €2.75m
Having already offered some 100 properties from across Ulster Bank's former branch network to the market in several tranches in late 2023, agent Cushman & Wakefield is seeking a buyer for the bank's landmark premises at 2-4 Lower O'Connell Street in Dublin city centre. The building, which occupies a high-profile position opposite the O'Connell monument and next to O'Connell Bridge, is guiding at a price of €2.75 million. The property, a protected structure, comprises two retail units at ground-floor level with offices and staff facilities overhead. It extends to 1,938sq m (20,862sq ft) over four floors and basement level, and features attractive bay windows along with a dome on its roof. The building is being sold with vacant possession following the withdrawal of Ulster Bank from the Irish market. The proposed sale of 2-4 Lower O'Connell Street follows the phased launch in 2023 of Ulster Bank's entire branch portfolio. The disposal process included the sale of 45 freehold/long leasehold properties across Ireland as well several high-profile buildings in the capital, including, most notably, the bank's former headquarters at 33 College Green. Commenting on the sale of 2-4 Lower O'Connell Street, Peter Love of Cushman & Wakefield said: 'This is an opportunity to acquire a very prominent property in the heart of Dublin city centre with full vacant possession. The building is suitable for a variety of uses including retail, office, hotel, hostel, student and residential accommodation, subject to planning permission.'
Irish Times
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Candace Bushnell at The Ambassador: A fun, girly night out for Sex and the City fans
Candace Bushnell: True Tales of Sex, Success, and Sex and the City The Ambassador Theatre ★★★☆☆ If you saw an uncanny number of kitten-heeled Carrie Bradshaw-lookalikes hotfooting it up O'Connell Street on Tuesday evening, they were likely making their way to The Ambassador Theatre for Candace Bushnell's one-woman show. All that was missing from the scene was a Dublin Bus emblazoned with Bushnell's face, (as in the opening credits to Sex and the City, when Sarah Jessica Parker spies her larger-than-life image). For the uninitiated, the Sex and the City TV series was based on Busnhell's book of the same name, an anthology of some of her juiciest New York Observer columns about women in their 30s navigating sex, dating, friendships and 'trying to have it all' in New York City . The series caught the zeitgeist of the 1990s, with the leading characters' names becoming a shorthand for personality traits à la, 'She's a total Miranda by day but she can be a bit of a Samantha after a few drinks'. READ MORE So did Bushnell have three best friends just like Charlotte, Samantha and Miranda? She took to the stage in a red leather-look skater skirt with a matching red top and heels to answer this and other questions that fans of the series have been asking for years. And the answer: the three women feature an amalgamation of traits from Bushnell's wide circle of girlfriends. There are shades of confusion when Bushnell switches from addressing the crowd in her opening monologue to acting out a scene where she talks to friends on an old brick phone. It soon becomes clear that this is a choreographed performance rather than an off-the-cuff Q&A-style event. Candace Bushnell: True Tales of Sex, Success and Sex and the City at the Ambassador, Dublin. Photograph Nick Bradshaw Candace Bushnell: True Tales of Sex, Success and Sex and the City at the Ambassador, Dublin. Photograph Nick Bradshaw Candace Bushnell: True Tales of Sex, Success and Sex and the City at the Ambassador, Dublin. Photograph Nick Bradshaw There is some built-in crowd interaction though, when she switches to gameshow host mode for Real or Not Real? Did she date a senator like Bradshaw did in the series? Real! Did she also meet Matthew McConaughey in LA? Real! Did he say 'I really want to 'bleep' you, baby' to her like he does to Bradshaw in the series? Not real! With the crowd settled, using a screen of slides as a visual aid, Bushnell goes into her life story, from her 'mini fashionista' days growing up in Connecticut, when she began calling herself Candi with an 'I', to when she decided to move to the big city and become a writer with just $20 to her name. When she arrives in New York, she calls a much older Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who had told her he could look her up if she was in the city. He invites her to his luxurious apartment and she stays there for a chunk of time, working on short stories. However, shockingly, their relationship deteriorates, and she ends up sleeping on a wad of foam on the floor of a friend's apartment. In perhaps the most successful set-piece of the show, Bushnell acts out going to the Manolo Blahnik store to buy a pair of black leather boots on credit that a confidante had assured her would change her life. She then high tails it to the New York Observer offices and climbs countless town house steps with her cumbersome purchase to interview for a gossip columnist job. She's up against a man 'with a wife and kids to support' and loses out to him. Candace Bushnell: True Tales of Sex, Success and Sex and the City at the Ambassador, Dublin. Photograph Nick Bradshaw Candace Bushnell: True Tales of Sex, Success and Sex and the City at the Ambassador, Dublin. Photograph Nick Bradshaw Her hopes for her 'big break' are crushed, until she gets a call from the editor offering her the chance to write her own column on single women in New York City. Worried about what her conservative parents would think of her visiting sex clubs and the like for column fodder, she creates an alter ego. And just like that ... Carrie Bradshaw was born. For the second part of the show, Bushnell dons a stunning lavender dress with feathery cuffs to talk about the thrill of seeing the Sex and the City TV series come to fruition. She goes on to describe what she did next, writing books such as Four Blondes, Lipstick Jungle and The Carrie Diaries, the last two of which also became successful TV series, although they didn't quite reach the heights of Sex and the City. She talks about her 10-year marriage to a ballet dancer that ended in divorce and concludes with the lesson: your girlfriends are the ones who are there for you no matter what. This generates a cheer from the crowd of friend groups, siblings and mums with their grown-up kids, for whom Sex and the City has been a major cultural touchstone. [ 20 years on: the complicated legacy of Sex and the City Opens in new window ] Although there was nothing revelatory in Bushnell's show, it was a fun, girlie night out. It was just a shame she didn't indulge the bubbly Dublin crowd with a Q&A section.
