One of the best books of all time, Ulysses might not have been written had author James Joyce been hit by bullets fired at this Dublin tower
- Irish author James Joyce briefly stayed at this squat tower in Dublin as a 22-year-old, during which shots were fired, once by someone mid-nightmare
- Now functioning as the James Joyce Tower and Museum, the building serves as the setting for much of Ulysses’ opening chapter
The train from Dublin’s Connolly Station crosses the River Liffey and passes the dignified quadrangles of Trinity College to head for the coastline, which it follows south through small seaside communities with surprisingly grand Georgian houses – commuting distance for the Irish capital’s wealthy.
From Sandycove station, a half-hour’s journey away, it’s only a short walk along the seafront past a small and secluded beach, alive with local bathers, to a squat circular stone tower atop a hill overlooking the bay.
Here, in September 1904, 22-year-old budding author James Joyce spent a week as a guest of medical-student-cum-poet Oliver St John Gogarty, the first civilian to rent the tower after the military’s departure in 1897.
But as a result of this visit the world nearly lost Ulysses, the perennially puzzling sprawl of a novel whose publication a century ago is being widely celebrated this year. For its future author came close to being shot.
The tower, built in 1804, its walls eight feet (2.5m) thick, is one of a series of small, circular forts, known as Martellos, constructed along the coast by Ireland’s British rulers to repel attack by Napoleon Bonaparte. It was originally topped by a swivelling cannon that covered the bay, of which only the mount still remains.