Ciarán Murphy: nothing beats sitting in a biblical deluge in Roscommon

Hard to focus on anything other than constant threat of pneumonia at Dr Hyde Park

Mean, Green Grass of Home – Frank McNally on the greatest of all Irish curses

‘May the grass grow before your door’

Irish start-up Ronspot raises €650,000 in funding

Company has developed booking system that lets staff pre-book offices facilities

Fury Brothers – Frank McNally on the history of boxing, James Joyce, and the curse of cold Guinness

In a Word: Rejoice

On James Joyce’s birthday we can rejoice in the power of language to gladden our hearts

Food for thought – An Irishman’s Diary about James Joyce, ‘The Dead’, and Ada Rehan

Dinner time

The ghosts in James Joyce’s modern machine

Although the writer’s literary experiments were utterly modern, they were haunted by ghosts, shadows and Irish legends

Anthony Burgess on James Joyce: the lost introduction

Written in 1986 as the introduction to a Dolmen Press edition of ‘Dubliners’ illustrated by Louis le Brocquy, but never used, this brilliant essay, recently found among the papers of the author, who died in 1993, appears here for the first time