Events

The Third Cambridge T S Eliot Lecture, Monday 7th November

Last year, the third lecture, took the form of a syposium. We were very fortunate in being addressed by Alexandra Harris and Leo Mellor.  Alexandra, whose very successful book, Romantic Moderns, gave tantalising insights into Eliot's belief in agriculture and the soil.  This subject had been introduced to members of the society by Steve Ellis at this year's Festival at Little Gidding.  Alexandra developed her ideas highlighting the irony of Evelyn Waugh's  Brideshead Revisited looking back nostalgically to a golden past of the early 1920s which existed in bleak contrast to The Waste Land of 1922. She went on to explore  Eliot's sense of place and identity in The Four Quartets.

Leo examined readings of The Waste Land and The Four Quartets during the second world war, introducing Rose Macaulay. Her novel entitled The World My Wilderness depicts a young couple fascinated by the flowers growing out of the dilapidated churches and bomb rubble after the war.  The book is shot through with allusions to and quotations from The Waste Land.

The Cripps Theatre was a splendid venue for the meeting which was packed out with an audience of one hundred and fifty, many of whom were undergraduates. Professor Helen Cooper, chair of the English faculty and fellow of Magdalene College, was the host and kindly handled the questions.