Knowlson's Beckett Scholarship

In my capacity as Visiting Scholar researching Beckett in Ulster University, Coleraine, NI, I was received by Faculty of Arts Dean, Professor Robert Welch, my MA supervisor in The University of Leeds when he supervised my dissertation, THE ATTEMPT AT FAILURE: A STUDY OF SAMUEL BECKETT'S PLAYS in 1971. 1971 was more or less about the same time when Beckett biographer and founder of Beckett International Foundation, James Knowlson shifted from 18th-Century Literature scholarship in Glasgow to Beckett in Reading. That lucky shift provided Becketteers, among other things, with a bible, Knowlson's SB biography, DAMNED TO FAME. One of the most interesting things I had discovered in my latest Beckett researching in Coleraine was that the role of Krapp was in 1985 played in East Berlin by Brecht's son-in-law. When meeting Knowlson at BIF in July 2005, I told Knowlson this anecdote which he told me had had already known, and I explained to him that one would feel totally apprehensive to mention any data about Beckett to him because, being the Beckett doyen he is, he would make even the angels stand corrected or at least checked