The event, opened by Irish President Mary McAleese, marks ten years since Beckett's death.

The man behind such works as Waiting For Godot is remembered by many as the finest dramatist of the 20th century - but Beckett himself saw his fiction as the real proof of his literary worth.

Christopher Ricks on understanding Beckett

His 19 plays, some barely minutes long, will be the centrepoint of the Barbican event, overshadowing any discussion of Beckett's novels.

BBC Radio 3 is attempting to redress the balance. As part of its Beckett Festival, the station is examining the writer in The Other Beckett.

The young Beckett fled Ireland for Paris

"Many people are a bit wary of Beckett outside the plays; suspicious at any rate that it will be above them or worse, will pretend to be above them," says Radio 3's Christopher Ricks.

Yet even Ricks, host of the four Postscript shows broadcast from 6 September, admits Beckett's written works can be daunting.

He describes the novel Watt, written while the expatriate Beckett was hiding from the Nazis in southern France, as an "extreme book".

In calling Beckett's post-war works First Love, The Expelled and The End "accessible", Ricks is compelled to add that this does not make them "user-friendly".

A reading from Beckett's Dante and the Lobster

However, in short stories like Dante and the Lobster, he points to literary discipline and power as potent as that in Waiting For Godot, the play which rocketed Beckett to fame in the mid-1950s.

The novel seems the ideal form for Beckett. Known for his willingness to face up to the certainty of death and the loneliness of life, Beckett liked the solitary nature of reading.

Many of his novels are written as inner monologues in the 'last person'. "The one that lasts, the one that is the last to go, going only when you go."

However, Beckett the author seems doomed to be understudy to Beckett the playwright.

Beckett "revolutionised" theatre

"Waiting For Godot revolutionised the whole Western world in making us rethink what drama is," says veteran stage director Sir Peter Hall.

"Sam moved theatre out of the wooden naturalism and opened people's minds to theatre's imaginative possibilities."

Waiting For Godot was voted the most influencial 20th century play in a recent poll at the National Theatre. The Barbican's Beckett Festival is sure to attract more devotees to the plays.

The stage works are being tackled by Dublin's Gate Theatre company, who have already performed the entire cycle of works before audiences in their home city and New York.

"Senior Beckett figures who saw these plays... said the productions of Godot and Endgame were some of the best you will ever see," says Dr Julian Garforth from the Beckett Archive at Reading University.

Gate Theatre. Up to their necks in Beckett

Beckett himself would perhaps be embarrassed - or puzzled - by the postumous attention being lavished on him.

When he was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize for literature, to recognise a body of work which "in the destitution of modern man accquires its elevation", Beckett's seat at the ceremony remained empty.

Such behaviour earned Beckett a reputation as a gloomy recluse, an image the festival may prompt his readers to reappraise.

"Beckett is very funny," says John Calder, a long-time friend of the writer. "It may be black humour, but it is the only way that misfortune can be faced, the alternative to despair."

For those daunted by the prospect of seeing every play, almost all populated by a cast of the deranged, depairing or dispossessed, the Gate Theatre's director has a surprising insight.

"After the 19 plays you come out wanting more, rather than thinking 'If I see another Beckett I'll scream'," says Michael Colgan.

For John Calder the value of his friend's entire body of work remains clear. "Beckett can change people, and never for the worse."

The Beckett Festival runs at the Barbican Centre, London, until 18 September.