Madam, - If there was ever any question about the credentials of Belfast as a European City of Culture, then Queen's University's decision to cancel its open learning programme on reading James Joyce's Ulysses - due to lack of interest - gives the answer.
As part of its autumn programme, the School of Education and Open Learning at QUB had planned to run a series of 10 weekly evening classes, beginning last Tuesday, on Joyce's masterpiece. But unfortunately the series has been cancelled because of the low number of enrolments.
As one of the disappointed few who enrolled, I fully understand that Queen's need a certain minimum number to make any course viable, but I am devastated that a city such as Belfast cannot produce any more than a handful of people interested in learning about one of the greatest creative works in literature.
Joyce's Ulysses is recognised throughout the world as one of the greatest novels of the 20th century and I don't think the lack of interest in Belfast is because Joyce was a Dubliner. If the course as on reading Shakespeare's Hamlet or Tolstoy's War and Peace, would the response have been any different?
Ulysses is the book Seamus Heaney said he would take on a desert island, when interviewed by Sue Lawley for the BBC's Desert Island Discs many years ago. Acknowledging that it is a challenging book, Heaney urged people to persevere with it as it gave endless insights into the mystery of the human condition. Is it not ironic that Queen's University, which has a library named in honour of Heaney, should cancel a course attempting to make his favourite novel more accessible to the general public?
Belfast a "city of culture"? There is more culture in a carton of yoghurt! - Yours, etc,
Dr DENIS McBRINN, Ballynahinch Road, Castlewellan, Co Down.