'Love loves to love love': Dublin celebrates Bloomsday
Celebrations are taking place across Dublin to mark Bloomsday, the day immortalised by James Joyce in his novel Ulysses.
For more than 70 years, the day has been marked throughout the capital with recitals and reenactments of scenes from the author's most famous work.
What was traditionally a one-day literary celebration on 16 June is now a week-long festival with multiple events, with this year's itinerary including a run and yoga workshops.
The traditional Bloomsday breakfast took place in Belvedere College this morning, where Joyce attended secondary school from 1893 to 1899.
Dozens of people in Edwardian costume also gathered at the nearby James Joyce Centre on North Great George's Street where the day is being celebrated in song and spoken word.
Among those attending the events is Indian columnist Mayan Austen Sofia who writes a daily column on life in Delhi for the Hindustan Times.
He discovered Ulysses during the pandemic and has written about his love for the novel and his experience of the Bloomsday festival in Dublin in a number of columns this week which have been published in the paper which has a print circulation of 18 million and further online readership.
He described Ulysses as "Dublin's Sistine Chapel" and says that since he has started writing about the novel a number of his readers have been in touch telling him how they have engaged with the novel.
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