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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 tilted, one leg resting on the other knee, cigarette poised, his slim cane delicately balanced. Someone once remarked that he held his cane like a musical instrument.
80 years ago: Nazi warplanes over Newbridge as bombs hit Ballymany
Historian Liam Kenny recalls how a stray German aircraft triggered a diplomatic war when it unloaded bombs near the Curragh racecourse in January 1941
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It was a New Year’s gift as unwelcome as it was unexpected. In the early hours of January 2, 1941, as the people of Newbridge slept under the thin security blanket of Irish neutrality, a stray Nazi plane droned overhead and unleashed a torrent of bombs to the west of the town.
High explosive projectiles plunged earthwards, scouring craters in the ground on the edge of the Curragh racecourse and in the pastures of Ballymany Stud.