TSE & Me

Well-known figures talk about TS Eliot and the impact of his work:

Seamus Heaney on a lifetime’s reading of TS Eliot: on the power and the “unusually pure” experience of his poetry

Jeanette Winterson on TS Eliot: the writer and author explains the impact Eliot’s “contained emotion” had upon her, and upon her troubled teenage years.

Alan Yentob on TS Eliot: the BBC broadcaster describes how he discovered and became intrigued by Eliot’s poetry.

Clive James on TS Eliot: primarily a review of Ronald Bush’s book on Eliot, “A Study in Character and Style”, his essay reveals James’s own regard for Eliot’s work.

Andrew Lloyd Webber On TS Eliot and the inspiration behind the musical, Cats

Jeremy Irons describes his experiences of reading TS Eliot’s poetry

Robert Webb of Peep Show and Mitchell & Webb, author of How Not To Be A Boy, talks about The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock.

Walker Evans, the great American photographer, cherished his personal copy of The Waste Land.

Adrian Henri, the Liverpool poet, wrote his Poem In Memoriam TS Eliot after Eliot’s death

Monica Lewinsky on The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock – “This, I believe, is why these lines first struck me so, and still do.”

Richard Ayoade, writer, actor and director, on The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock – “It just feels completely right emotionally.”

Sean O’Brien, himself a winner of the TS Eliot Prize for Poetry, reflects on The Waste Land, and the impact which it had upon him.

Hannah Tinti, author of the acclaimed first novel The Good Thief, on how lines from East Coker inspired her through writer’s block.

Alan Bennett, author and playwright, on the time he saw TS Eliot on a railway platform

Colm Tóibín, author, told The Guardian why he often wishes he were TS Eliot

Robert Redford revealed his fondness for lines from TS Eliot’s East Coker: ‘For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.’

Kate Mosse, historical novelist, would take Four Quartets to a desert island

Stephen King, the prolific horror writer, explained why he has quoted from The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock in his books more than half a dozen times

Ralph Fiennes, actor, on his relationship with Four Quartets

Paul Muldoon, poet, on TS Eliot, and on Prufrock

Jeremy Strong, the actor who plays Kendall Roy in Succession, “can’t live without” Four Quartets, and uses a line from the work to describe his acting (at 13:33 in this video)

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