At some point in the second half of the 1980s, John Minihan’s famous portrait of Samuel Beckett first appeared in one of London’s Sunday newspapers. I tracked John down – no easy feat in those pre-Google days – and met him over drinks one evening. He very kindly gave me some pictures, told me about his friendship with Beckett, and about the circumstances in which that extraordinary image of the writer was taken. It was 1985 and Beckett and Minihan were meeting across the street from Beckett’s apartment on the Boulevard St. Jacques in Paris, in Le Petit Café of the PLM Hotel.

Last week I checked into the Marriott Rive Gauche and discovered quite by chance that the PLM Hotel had morphed into a Marriott at some point in the intervening years and that my room looked out onto Beckett’s modest apartment on the 6th floor of 38 Boulevard St. Jacques. On heading to the lobby it was easy to find the spot Beckett and Minihan had sat that day more than 30 years ago. I strolled over to the apartment block, marveling that it bore no sign or plaque recording the years spent there by a great writer, and then went around the corner to Le Tiers Temps, the nursing home where Beckett died in December 1989.  Time pressures prevented me from completing this mini pilgrimage with a short stroll to the great writer’s resting place in the nearby Montparnasse Cemetery and, as many do, leaving a small pebble on his gravestone as a small mark of honor. Next time, for sure.