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Fianna Fáil sweeps to biggest win

Beckett awarded the Nobel Prize

Samuel Beckett, for long regarded as incomparably the finest living Irish writer, yesterday was awarded the Nobel Prize "for his writing which - in new forms for the novel and drama - in the destitution of modern man, acquires its elevation".

Beckett, over whose plays and novels has raged the literary arguments of two decades, has thus been acknowledged as an innovator of genius whose work has enriched the world of words and ideas.

[However Beckett was not best pleased] His agent, Jerome Linden, said Beckett and his wife were going into hiding to avoid publicity. He said that Mrs Beckett had described the prize as a catastrophe . . . The New York Times said "all prizes are ironic games, including this one. Beckett's plays are not for matinee audiences or book club readers . . ."

Romanian-born playwright Eugene Ionesco said: "I am happy that Beckett has this prize because he deserved it."

From Friday, October 24, and Saturday, October 25, 1969.