World renowned playwright Samuel Beckett

On this day, January 5, 1953 Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot was premièred in Paris.

Beckett was born in Dublin’s Foxrock in 1906, grew up as a member of the Church of Ireland, later he admitted he was an agnostic and his agnosticism influenced his writing.

He wrote in French and English.

During the war years he worked with the French Resistance and on one occasion narrowly avoided arrest by the Nazis.

I realised that Joyce had gone as far as one could in the direction of knowing more, [being] in control of one's material. He was always adding to it; you only have to look at his proofs to see that. I realised that my own way was in impoverishment, in lack of knowledge and in taking away, in subtracting rather than in adding.

The Samuel Beckett Bridge over the River Liffey was officially opened on December 10, 2009. 

In 2014 the Irish Navy took delivery of a patrol vessel that was name the LÉ Samuel Beckett. It was the first time a vessel of the Irish Navy was called after an Irish playwright.