“When I proposed a James Joyce biography to my publisher, I was aware that the deadliest booby trap on the road ahead was the Joyce estate’s explosive trustee, Stephen James Joyce, the author’s grandson.”

Yesterday was Bloomsday — the first Bloomsday in which Ulysses is in the public domain. The Daily Beast celebrated by publishing a nice piece by Gordon Bowker, the great man’s latest biographer in which he recounts what it was like working under the shadow of legal threats from Stephen Joyce, James’s grandson and controller of his literary estate. The piece also has a lovely photograph of Joyce with his infant grandson. Worth reading in full.