James Joyce’s closest friends for the last 12 years of his life, Paul and Lucie Léon, in 1922. Photograph: Copyright The Léon Estate James Joyce met Paul Léon in 1928, six years after the publication of Ulysses. “When Joyce learned that Paul’s middle name was Leopold (like Leopold Bloom, the everyman hero of Ulysses), he thought it was fortuitous,” says Luca Crispi of the James Joyce Research Centre at University College Dublin. “Joyce always thought that fate would bring him people and things that he needed to fulfil his work. Bloom’s middle name is Paula, which makes the coincidence more...