and attended an exhibition of paintings by Paul Klee. He traveled extensively around Germany, visiting all the places associated with Bach. Although John's taste in music was wide and eclectic, there were composers whose music he detested; it was well known that he hated the music of Handel, Vivaldi and Corelli. He loathed what he considered the inappropriate use of Mahler's 5th Symphony in Visconti's film "Death in Venice". Move to London In 1983 Ruth David sold her house in Bray and she and John left Ireland, moving to Greenwich in London, where he worked until he retired, for BBC Radio 3, producing and presenting various music programmes, and reporting on 'foreign' tapes. In 1990 he was invited to conduct the inaugural concert of the Irish Baroque Orchestra at the Third Early Music Festival in Dublin, but ill health intervened. Earlier he had had a hip operation. John's partner Ruth died in 1995 and then, in December 2002, his sister Ann died as well. He lived alone but was visited regularly by his friends in London and Dublin. John Beckett had visited Ann in Dublin on a regular basis and more frequently when she became ill; after she had died, he could not be persuaded to return to Ireland and declined to attend a reunion of the Cusack and Morrow families in Roundwood, County Wicklow. He died, sitting in his chair, on the morning of his 80th birthday, 5 February 2007 and was cremated at Lewisham Crematorium 11 days later following a simple ceremony consisting of Japanese music for the shakuhachi (an end-blown flute), which he had requested to be played at his funeral. References Further reading and additional information Gannon, Charles: Cathal Gannon — The Life and Times of a Dublin Craftsman, Dublin: 2006, Lilliput Press. Gannon, Charles: John S. Beckett — The Man and the Music, Dublin: 2016, Lilliput Press. . Gannon, Charles: Short Biography of John Beckett, Bach Cantatas Website. Knowlson, James: Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 1997) Cronin, Anthony: Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist (HarperCollinsPublishers, 1996) Fitz-Simon, Christopher: Eleven Houses – A Memoir of Childhood, Penguin Ireland, 2007, p. 56. Dervan, Michael: Obituary, The Irish Times, 17 February 2007, p. 14. Calder, John: Obituary, The Guardian, 5 March 2007. Jack, Adrian: Obituary, The Independent, 12 March 2007. Bartlett, Clifford: Obituary, Early Music Review, April 2007. Hoppen, Professor K. T.: Letter