Events are being held around the world today to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Samuel Beckett's birthday.
Beckett, who wrote most of his major work in French, was born in Foxrock, Co Dublin, on April 13th, 1906.
Samuel Beckett
Dublin will today join London, Paris, New York and Tokyo in organising centenary celebrations to honour the writer.
A host of top actors - including Charles Dance, Michael Gambon, John Kavanagh, David Kelly and Penelope Wilton - will read extracts from Beckett's work at the Gate Theatre.
The theatre holds exclusive performance rights for the writer's plays in Ireland and Britain.
Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, the municipal area where Beckett was born, will today host the Beckett Country Exhibition, organised by scholar Eoin O'Brien.
Caroline Murphy, a niece of Beckett, will also launch the Beckett Centenary Travel Bursary for an artist to travel from this part of the country to Paris in search of artistic inspiration.
Fans of Beckett in Paris will today make the annual pilgrimage to his grave in Montparnasse Cemetery to lay fresh flowers.
Beckett moved to Paris in the late 1930s where his most famous work, Waiting for Godot, was first performed in January 1953. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969.
Previous commemorations of Beckett were held in Dublin in 1981 and 1986 for his 75th and 80th birthdays.