The 1967 film of Joyce's Ulysses -- the only one ever made in the English language -- has finally been approved for screening in Ireland, a country with a history of puritanical censorship and social repressiveness:.

The fortunes of Strick's film, which has finally been passed for release in Ireland with a 15 certificate, are a measure of the enormous distance that Ireland has travelled in the past 30 years from what Brian Moore called "a nation of masturbators under priestly instruction".

Strick finally returned to Ireland last year, to direct a bawdy comedy by Aristophanes in Cork, and says he found the country "transformed". He decided it was time to resubmit Ulysses. Women he had encountered in pre-Mary Robinson Ireland were "fearful", he says. "When I returned I saw that they were barristers and doctors."

I wonder how Ireland's current censorship regime compares with Howard-era Australia's increasingly draconian one.

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