James Joyce wrote Ulysses. He revolutionised literature. He broke the English language and put it back together. He was a fearless intellectual giant.

He was also terrified of absolutely everything.

Specifically: Dogs and Thunder. Joyce had cynophobia (fear of dogs) because a dog bit him on the chin when he was five. But his fear of thunder (astraphobia) was on another level.

He believed thunder was the literal voice of God shouting at him for his sins. If a storm started while he was writing, the great modernist genius would drop his pen, run into a closet or under a bed, curl into a ball, and whimper until it stopped.

He once explained to a friend: “You were not brought up in Catholic Ireland.”

It’s a comforting thought. You can write the most complex novel in history, you can challenge the censors, you can be a literary god… and you can still be a grown man hiding under a table because a cloud made a loud noise.

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