Samuel Beckett, a novelist, dramatist and poet, died in Paris on 22 December, 1989, at the age of 83.

He was a leading exponent of the “Theater of the Absurd” movement, a collection of writers who penned pieces where time, place and identity are ambiguous and plots are repetitive and meaningless, in an attempt to create a dream like mood.

His plays are concerned with human suffering and survival, using characters who struggle with a world of nothing, juxtaposing this pessimistic outlook with dark humour to establish distance to his grim subjects.

Initially writing in English, before converting to French, Mr Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969, though refused to attend the ceremony to receive the award as he was a deeply private man.

Samuel Barclay Beckett was born into a prosperous Protestant family in Dublin, on April 13, 1906, and was educated at Trinity College, where he took a BA in modern languages in 1927.

He moved to Paris to teach English, where he met renowned Irish author James Joyce, whom he assisted in the writing of what would eventually become ‘Finnegans Wake’.

Deciding to end his academic career in 1932, Mr Beckett moved to London, where he wrote his first novel, “Dream of Fair to Middling Women”, whilst receiving psychotherapy treatment after the death of his father.

Following countless rejections at the hands of publishers, he returned to Paris, where he met his wife-to-be, Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnil.

At the outbreak of war in 1939 he stayed in Paris, joining the French resistance and assisting in sabotage attempts, even after he and Suzanne had been betrayed and fled south in 1942.

In 1945 Mr Beckett had a revelation in which his entire future direction appeared, a result of which saw him revert to the French language as his main vehicle of expression and saw him decide that his art must be subjective and drawn wholly from his own inner world.

Much of his most famous work was produced in the following 15 years, in particular the play " Waiting for Godot", which was famously described by one critic as a "play in which nothing happens, that yet keeps audiences glued to their seats."

Success paved the way for him to begin a new chapter in his career as a theatre director, whilst he also wrote for radio and television, though by the 1960s his works had become much shorter and minimal.

In addition to his Nobel Prize success Mr Beckett was also awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Médaille de la Résistance by the French government for his efforts in assisting the French resistance during World War II.

Mr Beckett's health declined steadily throughout the early 1980s and he was diagnosed with emphysema in 1986, before moving into Le Tiers Temps nursing home, upon where he completed his final work, a poem entitled "What is the Word".