Michael Bodkin News Today

President Michael D Higgins unveiled a plaque at the graveside of the man whose early death is recalled in The Dead’s pivotal sequence

PRESIDENT Michael D Higgins has unveiled a plaque honouring the link between the iconic Irish author James Joyce and a graveyard in Co. Galway. The tribute was officially revealed in Rahoon Cemetery to mark the connection of the grave of Michael ‘Sonny’ Bodkin with Joyce, his wife Nora Barnacle and his short story The Dead.

Uachtarán na hÉireann, President Michael D. Higgins unveiled a plaque in Rahoon Cemetery, Galway, to mark the connection of the grave of Michael ‘Sonny’ Bodkin…

Welcome to the website of the President of Ireland.

President Michael D. Higgins unveiled a plaque in Rahoon Cemetery, Galway, today to mark the connection of the grave of Michael ‘Sonny’ Bodkin with James Joyce, Nora Barnacle and the ‘The Dead’, which the President has said is one of the greatest short stories of all time.

June 10, 1950 – June 23, 2023

On a late August afternoon my friend John Hill drove me across the city of Zurich, climbing the suburban heights until we stopped at the gates of Fluntern Cemetery. We walked up the last incline to where, among the trees and billard-table lawns, we saw the Joyces’ grave. There was no mistaking it. Just above the grave is the Giacometti-like sculpture of the writer himself, the work of American artist Milton Hebald. There James Joyce sits, in characteristic pose, deep in conversation, head ...

For many years, the conventional wisdom about Nora Barnacle, James Joyce's longtime companion and eventually his wife, was that she was an ignorant but "country