Samuel Beckett, one of the towering figures of twentieth-century literature, was also famously reclusive. In these intimate interviews conducted by his biographer, James Knowlson, Beckett and his family, friends and contemporaries reveal more of the writer's human side than ever before.

Beckett himself talks of his early youth, his friendship with James Joyce and his Resistance work in Paris during the Second World War. Some of his closest friends remember him both as a schoolboy and struggling young writer, while his students at Trinity College, Dublin give their opinions of him as a lecturer.

Esteemed actors, writers and directors, including Billie Whitelaw, Edward Albee and J. M. Coetzee, remember Beckett at the time of his international success. The result is a vivid collection of first-hand experiences, a tribute to a remarkable novelist, poet and dramatist.