© Patrick Walsh, 2019

It was a pleasure and a privilege to read the ‘Willingdone Museyroom’ from Finnegans Wake at London’s wonderful Bookartbookshop’s Bloomsday celebration yesterday. And to see the great Marcia Farquhar’s generous, intimate and mesmerising reading of Molly Bloom’s soliloquy from Ulysses; you could have heard a pin drop.

I was proud to wear my old Royal Mail tie for the occasion, partly because I introduced my own reading by talking about reading Finnegans Wake – my now very battered copy of Faber’s 50th anniversary paperback edition of 1989 – when I was working as a postman in Camden Town in the early 1990s, and partly in honour of the postman who appears on p.488 of the novel:

— Oyessoyess! I never dramped of prebeing a postman

Thank you to Alastair (at my left elbow there) and Tanya for their warm hospitality, and to the friends old and new who travelled from as far afield as Brighton, Birmingham and, er, Bloomsbury – including my literary agent Patrick Walsh who took this photo. Thank you, Patrick ;)

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The Bookartbookshop website

Peter Chrisp’s ‘This way to the Museyroom!’ gives some really fascinating background on Joyce, Waterloo, and the writing of this section of Finnegans Wake – well worth a read

Buy the new paperback edition of The Fountain in the Forest direct from publisher Faber and Faber

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