O'Connell Street and Debenhams

You can't talk about food in Ireland without thinking of the Famine, when a million people died and a million emigrated to America, in a country that was exporting its food to Britain, but where farmers could not eat it themselves (it was too expensive), relying mostly for their sustenance to a diet of potatoes. And when the blight hit the potato crop in the 1840s I think, there was nothing else. The Famine is a big watershed in Irish history. It's no wonder, therefore, that food, or the lack thereof, is a constant theme in Ulysses.

'I saw three generations since O’Connell’s time. I remember the famine in ’46.'

'—It’s not the wife anyhow, Nosey Flynn said. I met him the day before yesterday and he coming out of that Irish farm dairy John Wyse Nolan’s wife has in Henry street with a jar of cream in his hand taking it home to his better half. She’s well nourished, I tell you. Plovers on toast.'