The Essay: Reading Ulysses

Original version

BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

The Essay Podcast

The Essay

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Essays from leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond.

Leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond, themed across a week - insight, opinion and intellectual surprise.

The Essay: Reading Ulysses: Anne Enright on Telemachus

Anne Enright on Telemachus

Reading Ulysses

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, Reading Ulysses, Anne Enright on Telemachus

Anne Enright gives us a close reading of the opening pages of James Joyce's Ulysses.

Anne Enright selects the first episode of James Joyce's Ulysses, closely deciphers the opening pages, and examines the characters we meet within them.

Five Irish writers each take a passage from James Joyce’s Ulysses and, through a close reading, explore its meaning and significance within the wider work, as well as what it means to them. Reading Ulysses is a famously challenging experience for most readers, so can our Essayists help? 

In the first essay of the series, award-winning Irish writer Anne Enright explores the first couple of pages of Joyce's epic. She examines the characters of Buck Mulligan and Stephen Dedalus - the two men we first meet at the top of a tower overlooking Dublin Bay. She tells us from where Joyce drew his inspiration in creating his protagonists and she reveals a little about how she first discovered the famous tome.

First broadcast in 2022 to mark the centenary of the novel's publication. 

Presenter: Anne Enright
Producer: Camellia Sinclair

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Five Irish writers re-read James Joyce's difficult classic novel Ulysses.

Five Irish writers re-read James Joyce's novel Ulysses, providing insights into the meaning of a notoriously difficult classic of world literature.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

The Essay

Reading Ulysses

Anne Enright on Telemachus

Genres

Brand

Series

BBC Radio 3

About BBC Radio 3