Colin MacCabe at the New Statesman:On 1 November 1928, the 22-year-old Samuel Beckett presented himself at the hyper-elite École Normale Supérieure in Paris’s Latin Quarter to take up a post as lecteur anglais. He had been nominated for the post by Trinity College Dublin, which had already marked out Beckett as an academic star in his chosen subject of French. He was to spend two years in a sinecure (he had only one pupil) perfecting his French and undertaking research on the novelist and poet Pierre Jean Jouve. It was understood that he would return from Paris bearing considerable research work and be appointed to an earmarked post at Trinity. A rather embarrassing moment was resolved when another room was found for the previous lecteur and Beckett moved, slightly later than anticipated, in to his designated rooms.