Editing Samuel Beckett (section)

== Later life and death ==
[[File:Beckett-grave-paris.jpg|thumb|right|Tomb of Samuel Beckett at the [[Montparnasse Cemetery|cimetière du Montparnasse]]]] 
The 1960s were a time of change for Beckett, both on a personal level and as a writer. In 1961, he married Suzanne in a secret civil ceremony in England (its secrecy due to reasons relating to French inheritance law). The success of his plays led to invitations to attend rehearsals and productions around the world, leading eventually to a new career as a theatre director. In 1957, he had his first commission from the [[BBC Third Programme]] for a radio play, ''[[All That Fall]].'' He continued writing sporadically for radio and extended his scope to include cinema and television. He began to write in English again, although he also wrote in French until the end of his life. He bought some land in 1953 near a hamlet about {{convert|60|km|mi|-1}} northeast of Paris and built a cottage for himself with the help of some locals.

From the late 1950s until his death, Beckett had a relationship with [[Barbara Bray]], a widow who worked as a script editor for the [[BBC]]. Knowlson wrote of them: "She was small and attractive, but, above all, keenly intelligent and well-read. Beckett seems to have been immediately attracted by her and she to him. Their encounter was highly significant for them both, for it represented the beginning of a relationship that was to last, in parallel with that with Suzanne, for the rest of his life."<ref>Knowlson (1997) p458-9.</ref> Bray died in [[Edinburgh]] on 25 February 2010.
[[File:"Samuel Beckett" by Javad Alizadeh.jpg|thumb|upright|Caricature of Samuel Beckett by [[Javad Alizadeh]]]]

In 1969 the [[avant-garde]] filmmaker [[Rosa von Praunheim]] shot an experimental short film portrait about Beckett, which he named after the writer.<ref name="RosaVonPraunheim">{{cite web|url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064926/|title=Samuel Beckett|work=[[Internet Movie Database]]|access-date=2022-03-20|archive-date=20 March 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220320183843/https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064926/|url-status=live}}</ref>

In October 1969 while on holiday in [[Tunis]] with Suzanne, Beckett heard that he had won the [[1969 Nobel Prize in Literature]]. Anticipating that her intensely private husband would be saddled with fame from that moment on, Suzanne called the award a "catastrophe".<ref>Knowlson (1998) p505.</ref> While Beckett did not devote much time to interviews, he sometimes met the artists, scholars, and admirers who sought him out in the anonymous lobby of the Hotel PLM Saint-Jacques in Paris – where he arranged his appointments and often had lunch – near his [[Montparnasse]] home.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.themodernword.com/beckett/beckett_biography.html |title=Happiest moment of the past half million: Beckett Biography |publisher=Themodernword.com |access-date=12 December 2013 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140817072126/http://www.themodernword.com/beckett/beckett_biography.html |archive-date=17 August 2014 }}</ref> Although Beckett was an intensely private man, a review of the second volume of his letters by Roy Foster on 15 December 2011 issue of ''The New Republic'' reveals Beckett to be not only unexpectedly amiable but frequently prepared to talk about his work and the process behind it.<ref>{{cite magazine | last = Foster | first = Roy | title = Darkness and Kindness | url = http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/magazine/97767/beckett-letters-godot-ireland?passthru=YWEzNjliOWUzNTZhNGRmNGQ4MDMwZmNkOTVjYmY2M2E | magazine = The New Republic | date = 15 December 2011 | access-date=5 December 2011}}</ref>

Suzanne died on 17 July 1989. Confined to a nursing home and suffering from [[emphysema]] and possibly [[Parkinson's disease]], Beckett died on 22 December 1989. The two were interred together in the [[Montparnasse Cemetery|cimetière du Montparnasse]] in Paris and share a simple granite gravestone that follows Beckett's directive that it should be "any colour, so long as it's grey".