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Hindustan Times
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Delhiwale: Dilli's first Joycean
Meet Dilli's no. 1 Joycean. This gentlewoman in Sunder Nagar is likely to be the only Delhi dweller to have made it to the most significant James Joyce destination on the very first day of its opening to the public. 86-year-old Nayana Goradia fondly recalls being at the site of the novel's opening scene on Bloomsday in 1962. (HT Photo) It all started in 1922, with the publication of Ulysses. Joyce's great Dublin novel unfolds within a single day—16 June, today named Bloomsday after the book's hero, and celebrated across the world. That day, Dublin's sea-facing Martello tower becomes a mecca for Joyce fans; it being the site of the novel's opening scene. In 1962, the tower was filled with souvenirs from the writer's life, and thrown open on that year's Bloomsday as James Joyce Museum. Among the first visitors was a woman in sari. This evening in 2025, ensconced in her living room with her hardbound Ulysses, the 86-year-old Nayana Goradia fondly recalls that afternoon. 'I remember the tower's staircase so clearly—I couldn't believe I was actually there.' Nayana was a literature student in England when she boarded a Dublin-bound ferry in Liverpool. The young woman expected to meet countless Joyce readers on reaching the Irish capital. But she found no Bloomsday buzz. She didn't even encounter much of a crowd in the museum, except for some Joyce fanatics from America. Could it be because Joyce, dead for 20 years by then, didn't yet command the esteem he does today among his country people? Many Irish considered the novel to be insulting to their religion and nation. 'Do you not know that Joyce was a traitor?'—Nayana remembers a Dubliner admonishing her in a pub. Whatever, 'I was thrilled to be walking along the streets that Joyce had written about in Ulysses.' Strolling in the Trinity College grounds, she met a young man lying on the grass with Lady Chatterley's Lover. Turned out his father had personally been acquainted with Joyce! For five days, Nayana walked the Dublin streets in silk saris; her long hair tamed into two neat braids. Today, she is wearing a long kurta over chooridar pajamas; her hair shorter and smart. Walking in careful steps, she escorts her guest to a table laid out with sandwiches, quiches, pakodis, tarts, pastries and chai. She doesn't touch a single snack as she talks about her massive book collection ('neem leaves keep the books safe'). Her chai turns lukewarm, malai forming on the top. A few months after her literary pilgrimage to Joyceland, while visiting friends in Geneva, Nayana chanced to meet a man of letters whose nana was the Raja of Kapurthala. Stuart Ahluwalia Gilbert is more renowned for being the world's first Joyce scholar. He was also a friend of Joyce. Nayana now gets up from the table to show her copy of Gilbert's influential book—James Joyce's Ulysses: A Study. The paperback bears Gilbert's handwritten inscription for Nayana, testifying to their 'agreeable meeting.'
RTÉ News
4 days ago
- Sport
- RTÉ News
Meath v Galway: The long and winding road back from 2001
The last time Meath played Galway in Croke Park they had just whipped Kerry in stunning fashion. The 2001 All-Ireland final was the first decider of the 'second chance' era. In other respects, it represented the end of an era, one generally beloved of Gaelic football fans from outside Dublin or the North. That period between Ulster's two patches of dominance in the early '90s and the early 2000s. When Dublin couldn't get out of Leinster. The early years of the Celtic Tiger. Bertie's first term as Taoiseach. Kildare super-fan Charlie McCreevy in Finance. Talk of shiny new stadiums going up all over west Dublin. Half of Croke Park still a building site, covered in Sisk signage. The Galway hurlers and footballers have rarely gone well at the same time (though they have occasionally been going badly at the same time). Like the Irish soccer and rugby teams, relative boom times for one have tended to coincide with lean patches for the other. The second year of the new millennium was one such time, however. It was the closest they've come to emulating Cork's feat in 1990. On the morning of the All-Ireland hurling final, a big yard sign around Enfield addressed the Dublin-bound traffic with the message 'Good luck today Galway but Sam is MINE!!' Unfortunately for the owner of the sign, it happened the other way around. Meath's blithe pre-match confidence was seemingly well-founded in the aftermath of their borderline garish hammering of Kerry in the semi-final. "Just in case you think there's something wrong with the caption in the top left corner of the screen, there isn't. That is the correct score. 2-13 to Kerry's five points," said Darragh Maloney with three minutes left in normal time. Most of the Kerry support were a long way down Jones's Road at that point. Boylan later claimed he felt a shiver of foreboding as the Meath crowd 'way-hayed' every five-metre fist pass in the closing minutes, as if he knew in his bones this was all bad karma. On the other side, Galway's progression to a third All-Ireland final in four years was considerably more laboured. The 1998 champions had lost the previous year's decider to Kerry after a replay and looked a jaded, clapped out team in their four-point defeat to Roscommon in Tuam in June. There was an undue air of finality in the assessments of Galway that evening. "They had gone to the well and found it dry," according to Pat Spillane on that evening's Sunday Game. As usual, the implications of the new format didn't occur to people until they started to play out in practice. Not unlike 2025, Galway made uneven progress out in the wilds of the backdoor, winning their first ever championship fixture against Armagh after almost tossing away a large lead. But, crucially, they made progress, nonetheless. Meath had gone the traditional route, beating Dublin in the Leinster final. Their sadistic habit of holding out the prospect of victory to underdogs in Leinster before snatching it away at the last minute was again in evidence a couple of times against Westmeath that summer. That was all mere prequel to their massacre of Kerry. It remains the heaviest championship defeat Kerry have suffered in the 21st century. The second heaviest was in Tullamore a fortnight ago. The Meath fans, as we've noted before, practically conga-danced their way into Croke Park for the decider. The final itself was a strangely drab one from a neutral perspective. The piéce de résistance semi-final performance being followed by a flat final performance is a story we've seen recur often across sports. England in the 2019 Rugby World Cup being a classic of the genre. In Gaelic football, Meath in 2001 is probably the starkest example of the phenomenon. Their final display was as abject as the semi-final was spectacular. 2001 remembered as @MeathGAA and @Galway_GAA lock horns again in the championship - watch on @RTE2 and @RTEplayer - listen on @RTERadio1 — The Sunday Game (@TheSundayGame) June 28, 2025 It was only seven minutes into the second half, with just one point separating the teams, that Martin Carney put his finger on things - "Meath just seem tied to the ground. There's a malaise there today that we haven't seen throughout the summer." A couple of minutes later, Carney noted that "Galway were pulverising them everywhere but the scoreboard." Soon, they were doing so on the scoreboard. Galway's two most recent inter-county managers were central figures in the second half performance. Kevin Walsh devoured John McDermott on kickouts and then Pádraic Joyce began to get his eye in after an indifferent first half. The Meath defence continually showed Joyce onto his right foot, which might have been a sensible enough strategy on any other day. Joyce finished with 0-10, five with either foot. In his Man of the Match interview that night, he figured the county board chairman accidentally spilt holy water on his right boot before the game. Long before that, Meath were reduced to 14 men when the score was at 0-09 to 0-07. Trevor Giles, who endured surely his worst ever half of football in Croke Park, bizarrely shanked a free-kick into Joe Bergin's hands, who fed Paul Clancy. Nigel Nestor crudely dragged down Clancy from around the shoulder and was banished on a second yellow. Donal Curtis, veins bulging almost with fury at how the game was going, made strenuous efforts to join him though the referee Michael Collins evidently felt he couldn't send two of them off. They were thrown an undeserved lifeline late in the second half when John McDermott was absurdly awarded a penalty for a Golden Raspberry attempt at a dive. All it ended up doing was sapping their morale further as Giles dragged it low and wide of the left upright. Things petered out horribly for Meath after that and the rest of the game was a procession. 0-17 to 0-08 was the slightly jarring final scoreline. Meath were a no-show. And Galway, after surviving numerous scares en route, were champions for the second time in four years. The only county to vote against the backdoor format at Special Congress the previous winter had wound up winning the first ever All-Ireland title via the backdoor. We weren't to know it but it was the last we'd see of either team on that stage for two decades. The following year, a highly physical and well-conditioned Armagh overcame Kerry through force of will in the 2002 decider. A year after that, Tyrone swarmed Kerry in the 2003 semi-final in a spectacle which deeply offended the southern purists (namely, Pat Spillane) to tee up a first-ever all northern final. Ulster was over its late-90s slump and Kerry and Tyrone would carve up the remainder of the decade between them. The 2001 finalists had retreated almost to also-ran status by that stage. Meath's decline was the more precipitous. On the evening of the 2001 defeat, a couple of Meath fans were vox-popped and finished their contribution by announcing that "Sean Boylan is God", which Michael Lyster, back in studio, mis-heard as "Sean Boylan is gone" before chortling at the fickleness of supporters. Though, as it happened, this was Meath's last significant push for glory in Boylan's long reign. His last four seasons in charge were a forgettable post-script, akin to Micko's final three years as Kerry manager. Between 2002 and 2005, they failed to make a Leinster final and were beaten twice by Fermanagh and once by Cavan in early round qualifiers. Meath rallied under Boylan's successors, reaching All-Ireland semi-finals in 2007 and 2009. The late 2000s crop of players were not regarded as world-beaters in their own time, constantly being judged against their illustrious forebears. The succeeding generation, however, would place them in a far more flattering light. "When I look back on it, do I have frustrations? I think we were maybe over-achieving a little bit, to be honest with you," Anthony Moyles said on 'The Square Ball' podcast. "When I look at the next 10 years, Meath didn't get within an a***s roar of an All-Ireland semi-final." The manner of the 2010 Leinster final victory - we won't go there - appeared to do more psychological harm than good. Galway's drop-off was comparably gradual but began to pick up speed by the end of the decade. They still held the whip-hand in the province until the mid-2000s. There have been occasions when Galway have celebrated Connacht title wins with great gusto, usually after they've ended a bit of a drought or pipped Mayo in a classic. The few post-2001 Connacht championship wins were not among those times. The Connacht title wins of 2002, 2003 and 2005 were won almost on autopilot and quickly followed by quarter-final losses and they infamously wouldn't win again in Croke Park until the 2017 Division 2 final against Kildare. Joyce, still relied upon into the twilight of his long career, played his final match in 2012 qualifier loss to Antrim. This result was, at one level, shocking but was nonetheless typical of the era. Throughout that period, the persistent air of purist self-regard which was rife in Galway football was deemed an impediment to their development, in an era of swarmed defences. The televised humiliation of 2013 against Mayo is recalled as the nadir, though it may have had some benefits in the sense of shaking them out of their torpor. It wasn't until Walsh came in as manager, the arrival of Shane Walsh and Damien Comer from the underage ranks, and the shock win over Mayo in 2016 that Galway re-announced themselves as a player. Meath's situation was considerably more grim. Their struggles were the subject of much lamentation and even pity throughout the 2010s, their morale seemingly destroyed by the awesome and overbearing nature of Dublin's dominance throughout that era. Their football identity largely built on always being able to match the Dubs, they suffered a crisis of confidence when they were no longer able to do so. That situation prevailed right up until 27 April, 2025. Now, they look reborn. Despite their manager's misgivings, no team has benefitted more from the rules revolution than Meath, who boast the athletic profile which suits the new game perfectly. They've now beaten Dublin and Kerry in the one campaign, something they only managed once before - in 2001.
The Journal
31-05-2025
- The Journal
Rail line closed between Connolly Station and Dún Laoghaire for June bank holiday weekend
IRISH RAIL HAS announced that its services between Dublin's Connolly Station and Dún Laoghaire will be unavailable this weekend as commuters flock to a series of bank holiday events. Between today and Monday, 2 June, restrictions and alterations will apply to both rail and bus services because of limited capacity due to annual summer gatherings such as the Bloom festival and the VHI Women's Mini Marathon taking place. Here are the main changes to note across the primary public transport services. Irish Rail A revised timetable will be in place for the weekend, with Monday's times operating as Sunday schedules for Dart and commuter services. Dart services between Connolly Station and Dún Laoghaire will be unavailable due to major works on the line between Connolly and Blackrock which will also impact Rosslare Intercity services. However, rail tickets on affected routes are valid on Dublin Bus. Dart services are operating between Malahide/Howth and Connolly, and between Dún Laoghaire and Bray/Greystones. Irish Rail is reminding customers to pre-book tickets to ensure a seat on intercity trains because of high demand on Heuston-bound rail for the purpose of attending the Bord Bia Bloom festival in Dublin's Phoenix Park. Advertisement Some Dublin-bound trains from Galway, Limerick, Cork and Waterford are already fully booked, so additional trains will operate out of Cork and Galway to accommodate passenger numbers heading to Bloom Extra early trains from Cobh, Midleton and Mallow will be laid on to provide for high numbers attending the Cork City Marathon on Sunday. Bus Éireann The company says all services will operate to a Sunday schedule this weekend. This will include Dublin's Expressway services serving Ballina, Cavan, Donegal, Dundalk, Letterkenny, Monaghan, Sligo, Waterford and Wexford as well as serving Cork, Galway, Limerick and Tralee. Customers are strongly advised to pre-book their tickets and allow for delays if heading to and from Dublin Airport on Expressway due to holidaymakers jetting abroad. The VHI Women's Mini Marathon in the capital will cause road closures, so Bus Éireann says people must check service updates on its website for the latest travel information. Dublin Bus The company's Monday service will operate to a Sunday schedule. Its Nitelink service will continue today, but will not be in place tomorrow. Customers are told to be aware of traffic diversions in place across the city to facilitate the Women's Mini Marathon tomorrow. Readers like you are keeping these stories free for everyone... A mix of advertising and supporting contributions helps keep paywalls away from valuable information like this article. Over 5,000 readers like you have already stepped up and support us with a monthly payment or a once-off donation. Learn More Support The Journal
The Irish Sun
11-05-2025
- Politics
- The Irish Sun
Infamous gangland killer Cotton Eye' Joe Delaney's jailed son's secret crime past of drugs & gun smuggling raps revealed
THE jailed son of Ireland's first ever convicted gangland killer, 'Cotton Eye' Joe Delaney, has raps for drugs and gun smuggling in Europe, we can reveal. Advertisement 2 Scott Knight has been caged for his crimes in another jurisdiction 2 'Cotton Eye' Joe Delaney was Ireland's first ever convicted gangland killer Credit: Collins The His capture earlier this year as he went to board a Dublin-bound ferry from Holyhead in Knight had become increasingly active against immigration over the past few years on He backed various protests against asylum seekers entering the country and urged people to join the Irish National Party. Advertisement READ MORE IN IRISH NEWS It put him on the radar of In one bizarre rant posted online in January, Knight claimed new laws in And he went on to say that he and seven of his friends have agreed to become a 'firing squad', warning if anyone interferes with children, women or elderly, 'you get the death penalty'. He said: 'Put up against the wall for the firing squad and take them out. Bang! That's the truth.' Advertisement MOST READ IN IRISH NEWS Latest Knight added: 'Do not come into this country and interfere with all these children, all these women, all these elderly, or this is what you get. Bang! 'Do you understand? I've another seven people from different counties who want to remain anonymous, and they've agreed to do this with me.' RAP SHEET REVEALED Today, The Irish Sun can reveal how Knight has a serious rap sheet across We have learned he was convicted for drug importation in Eschweiler, Advertisement In March 2015, he was stopped at the Coquelles terminal in France by customs officers who discovered two assault rifles, four magazines and 40 rounds of ammunition in the boot of his car. When authorities searched his phone, they found far right anti-Islam and white nationalist images. BARRED FROM ENTRY Delaney did not turn up for his trial in 2019 and was sentenced in his absence to two years in jail and a fine of €1,000. He was also barred from entering Another conviction was for possession of narcotics in connection with an illegal organisation in Belgium. Advertisement We understand Knight also had €18,000 seized from him by authorities in A source told us: 'This fella is mad but he's someone who can clearly be very dangerous too. 'The Gardai were monitoring him in recent years. 'The funny thing is, he had been ranting and raving about immigration when he has extremely serious convictions throughout Europe himself in other countries. This was for high-level criminality.' Advertisement FERRY FAIL Knight was nabbed this year as he went to board the ferry and was jailed for five years in March. He pleaded guilty to the production of cannabis at his former address in Here, Knight's rap sheet goes back to 1991 for malicious damage. In 1996, he was sentenced to ten years for the murder of Mark Dwyer. But on appeal the conviction was downgraded to accessory to murder after the fact and the sentence was reduced to five years. Advertisement Dwyer was shot dead after being tortured when a bag of 40,000 KILLER DAD Knight's father, Cotton Eye Joe Delaney, was convicted of Dwyer's murder and was only released from prison in recent years. Knight was also convicted in 2017 for the possession of narcotics here and got a suspended sentence in 2022 after he stole another man's identity in a bid to apply for a fake Despite his own criminal record abroad and in Ireland, Knight encouraged people to get out and vote in last November's General Election to 'keep the evil out of Ireland'. Advertisement He claimed the main parties were behind immigrants getting citizenship, before adding: 'That means they can vote their family into Ireland. They're going to get millions and millions of Muslims and non-Irish.' After far right candidates flopped at the polls, Knight claimed the Government 'ripped everyone off'
The Journal
30-04-2025
- The Journal
Major morning train service delays after 'issue' at level crossing near Maynooth
A NUMBER OF train services are currently experiencing significant delays due to an issue at a crossing near Maynooth, Co Kildare in the early hours of this morning. In a statement posted online this morning, Iarnród Éireann (Irish Rail) said that delays are expected between Maynooth and Leixlip due to 'an issue' at a level crossing between these two stations' located in the Kilmacredock area. All services between Maynooth and Connolly have been impacted, including Dublin-bound intercity services from Sligo and Longford. Advertisement Delays expected between Maynooth and Leixlip. There is an issue at a level crossing between these two Station. Delays between Maynooth and Connolly are currently expected. We are working to rectify this issue. Update to follow. -CL #Irishrail @TFIupdates — Iarnród Éireann (@IrishRail) April 30, 2025 Several trains are expected to be held in Maynooth, and other services have been delayed by over 45 minutes. Iarnród Éireann have said that special signalling arrangements are in place to enable trains to operate between Maynooth and Clonsilla. Dublin Bus is also accepting rail tickets from Maynooth and Leixlip, the rail service added. 'We are working to rectify this issue,' Iarnród Éireann said in a statement. Readers like you are keeping these stories free for everyone... A mix of advertising and supporting contributions helps keep paywalls away from valuable information like this article. Over 5,000 readers like you have already stepped up and support us with a monthly payment or a once-off donation. Learn More Support The Journal
