ABSTRACT
13 Apr. (Good Friday) is the date usually given for Samuel Barclay Beckett’s birth, but the birth certificate shows 13 May. He was born in the family home of Cooldrinagh in Foxrock, south of Dublin, to William Beckett, surveyor, and Mary (May) Roe, daughter of a wealthy Kildare family. ‘You might say I had a happy childhood ... My father did not beat me, nor did my mother run away from home’ (Beckett, quoted in Dierdre Bair, Samuel Beckett, p. 22).
