From the late 1940s Richard Hamilton was engaged with a project to produce a suite of illustrations for James Joyce's "Ulysses". In 2002, the British Museum staged an exhibition of Hamilton's illustrations of James Joyce's Ulysses, entitled "Imaging Ulysses". A book of Hamilton's illustrations was published simultaneously, with text by Stephen Coppel. In the book, Hamilton explained that the idea of illustrating this complex, experimental novel occurred to him when he was doing his National Service in 1947. His first preliminary sketches were made while at the Slade School of Art, and he continued to refine and re-work the images over the next 50 years. Hamilton felt his re-working of the illustrations in many different media had produced a visual effect analogous to Joyce's verbal techniques. The "Ulysses" illustrations were subsequently exhibited at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (in Dublin) and the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen (in Rotterdam). The British Museum exhibition coincided with both the 80th anniversary of the publication of Joyce's novel, and Richard Hamilton's 80th birthday.