Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) presented a world of abject misery, failure, and the absurd in his theatre pieces, novels, stories and poetry. Yet the despair in his work is never absolute, leavened as it is with bleak humour and an indomitable will to survive; this is perhaps best embodied by his most famous characters Vladimir and Estragon, in the play Waiting for Godot. An original and provocative historical interpretation of Beckett and his art, Samuel Beckett is not just a ‘life and times’, but also an ‘anti-life’ of a figure who, like many of the very greatest writers, was profoundly repelled by his age.