Performances, conferences, readings and other events relating to TS Eliot.
Please check events before making arrangements. No endorsement or recommendation is implied by inclusion.
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One-day seminar on Eliot’s verse drama with free online access, April 2026
A Critical Reassessment of Eliot’s Verse Drama: Influence, Evolution, and Perception is a one-day seminar, with free online access.
Hosted by UNED, Madrid’s Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, the TEATREL-IEP seminar takes place on 6th May 2026. “The object of study consists primarily of Eliot’s critical writings on modern verse drama, as well as his complete dramatic oeuvre. The project examines Eliot’s plays, their influence during the 1930s–1950s, their evolution from experimentation to convention, and their overall reception.”
Sessions during the day include
• “Verse Drama in the Context of British Theatre of the First Half of the Twentieth Century”
• “Anne Ridler and T. S. Eliot at Faber and Faber”
• “Modern Marriage and Medieval Liturgical Life in T. S. Eliot’s Drama” and
• “Looking at T. S. Eliot’s Drama from a Gender Perspective”
There is no fee for online access, but registration is required; details of the full schedule and a link to online registration are here,
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London performance of The Waste Land, April 2026
A performance of The Waste Land, with extracts of Beethoven’s String Quartets, and a Q&A with Professor Mark Ford, is being staged at The Questors Studio, Ealing.
“Experience modern poetry’s first masterpiece in a special reading by actors and accompanied by musicians playing extracts of the Beethoven String Quartets by which Eliot was later influenced.
“After the performance there will be a discussion and Q and A with Mark Ford, Professor of English Literature at University College London and editor of the Library of America edition of the work of T.S. Eliot.” Mark Ford is also known for his Close Readings podcast with Seamus Perry for the London Review of Books.
The performance is on Monday 27th April at 7:30pm; tickets are £5 on the door, and full details are here.
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The Shadowland of Poetry, featuring T.S. Eliot, March 2026
A solo exhibition of drawings, paintings, and installations by Lesley Croxford interprets the poems of T.S. Eliot and Sylvia Plath.
The works “Explore the themes of emotional intensity, myth, identity and modern alienation, translating two of the twentieth century’s most powerful poetic voices into a striking visual language.”
The exhibition is at The Minories Galleries, 74 High Street, Colchester, Essex, from April 19th to May 3rd. Admission is free and details are here.
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Prufrock in Herne Bay, March 2026
Beach Creative, “Herne Bay’s Creative Hub”, is presenting Prufrock, an exhibition of photo prints by Ian Jones illustrating lines from ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’.
The exhibition runs from 20th to 26th March, 10am to 4pm. Details of the exhibition are here.
There is a special event, Do I Dare?, at 6pm on 21st March. This combines a live performance of the poem, a talk on its background and “The curious story of the discovery of a hitherto unknown letter…” Tickets are £10, to include a free drink. Details are here.
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Free performance of The Rock in Oxford, March 2026
A free theatrical performance of T.S. Eliot’s The Rock will be staged as part of Convergence 2026 in Oxford.
“The pageant play features words by T. S. Eliot and music by Claudio Scarabottini. First performed in London in 1934 at Sadler’s Wells Theatre, the work blends poetry, music, and choral elements to reflect on faith, community, and modern society.”
Convergence “is a cultural initiative designed to foster a shared space for dialogue among people and ideas,” say the organisers. “driven by a group of academics and professionals with diverse interests, expertise, political views, and sensitivities, united by a commitment to academic collaboration and a shared desire for a common journey of research.”
The performance is on Saturday 28th March at 8:30pm, at Corpus Christi College, Oxford; details of the performance are here. and free tickets can be booked here. Convergence 2026 takes place over the weekend of 28th-29th March and full details of the wider event and its programme are here.
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Murder in the Cathedral in Oxford, March 2026
The Oxford Playhouse is to stage a production by the Oxford Theatre Guild of TS Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral.
“Oxford’s leading amateur theatre company returns to The Playhouse,” the producers say, “with a bold and evocative production of Eliot’s thought-provoking and relevant masterpiece”.
The production runs from Tuesday 21st to Saturday 25th April. Tickets are from £15, and details are here.
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Repeat of The Waste Land online study course, March 2026
The London Literary Salon is repeating its online study course of The Waste Land.
Beginning on 5th April, the five-part course will run on Sunday evenings from 6pm to 8pm until 3rd May.
“Over the course of five weeks we will celebrate the poem’s complexity, dig into its intertextuality and – above all – observe how it resonates with us today.” The course is run by Dr Karina Jakubowicz, and further details about the course and Dr Jakubowicz are in the item about the earlier course; scroll down just two stories.
Full details of the course are on the website of the London Literary Salon.
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The Waste Land at Wilton’s Music Hall, February 2026
The historic Wilton’s Music Hall in East London is reprising the reading of The Waste Land by Nathaniel Parker.
“The complexities and characters,” says Parker, “are thrilling to navigate.”Four performances (one matinee) are scheduled from 11th to 14th June.
Previously staged in December 2025, the evening also includes a reading of ‘The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock’, while director Giles Taylor provides a “contextual preamble” to The Waste Land.
Tickets are £12.50 – £27.00 (£10.00 – £24.50 concessions). Booking is now open and details are here.
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The Waste Land – online study course, February 2026
The London Literary Salon is hosting a five-week online course over Zoom studying The Waste Land, on Thursday evenings from 19th February to 19th March.
“In this early Springtime study we will read T.S. Eliot’s groundbreaking modernist poem The Waste Land. Over the course of five weeks we will celebrate the poem’s complexity, dig into its intertextuality and – above all – observe how it resonates with us today.
“Questions we might consider include: ‘How does this poem present modernity?’, ‘How does it explore the concepts of waste and the environment?’, ‘Is it a product of gritty realism or sublime mysticism?’ and, last but not least, ‘Why does it endure?’
Dr Karina Jakubowicz is a graduate of University College London, Clare College Cambridge and Trinity College Dublin. She is particularly interested in modernist representations of space and place. She is the author of Garsington Manor and the Bloomsbury Group (Cecil Woolf Press, 2016) and is the winner of the 2017 Katherine Mansfield essay prize.
The full price for the course is £200, but support may be available for those seeking a reduction. Details of the course are here.
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Italian translations of Four Quartets, February 2026
As part of Oxford University’s Italian Research Seminar, on 9th February at 12:00 Eleonora Gallitelli of the Università degli Studi di Udine will consider The Italian Translations of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets (1944-2013): Appropriations, Rewritings and Reception.The audience is public.
“The Italian Research seminar is convened by DPhil students and seeks to bring together members of the sub-faculty at all levels (professors, researchers, and students), as well as anyone interested in any aspect of Italian studies.
“Although the seminars are often examples of cutting-edge research, they are accessible to anyone with some knowledge of Italian literature, language, and culture, allowing for vibrant dialogue among a wide range of specialists.”
Full details of the event are here.
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Four Quartets: paintings, music and readings by A.N. Wilson, January 2026
The author and journalist A.N. Wilson will read ’Burnt Norton’ and ‘Little Gidding’ at an afternoon event combining his readings with music by string quartet.
Wilson spoke on Eliot and Danté at the 2024 TS Eliot Festival at Little Gidding, and was the presenter of a BBC programme, Return to Eliotland.
“This programme weaves music by Purcell, Haydn, Beethoven, Dowland, Locke, and Britten with two poems from T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, read by A. N. Wilson. As Eliot’s words unfold through ‘Burnt Norton’ and ‘Little Gidding’, the music reflects their themes – time, memory, silence, and renewal – meeting at the still point of the turning world.”
The performance is on Sunday, 8 February 2026, at 4:00 pm, at the Marylebone Theatre, London. From 1 to 28 February, a selection of paintings by artist Jérémie Queyras, inspired by Four Quartets, will be on display in the foyer of the theatre. Tickets are £20.25, and details and booking are here.
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T.S. Eliot’s ‘anti-Polishness’, January 2026
A seminar at the UCL Faculty of Arts & Humanities will address ‘T.S. Eliot’s anti-Polishness: British literary responses to Central European geopolitics in the interwar era’.
Juliette Bretan, who has recently completed her PhD at Cambridge on depictions of Poland and East-central Europe in early twentieth century British literature, observes that the manuscript of The Waste Landrefers to ‘hooded hordes swarming / over Polish plains’.
“Eliot altered this to ‘endless plains’ in the final version, but the lost reference to Poland is a telling omission, which offers an insight into the poet’s perception of the newly-independent nation, and wider geopolitics in Central Europe, during the period immediately after the First World War.
“This talk explores Eliot’s poem alongside his wider writing – and other British works about the region – to consider how Central European geopolitics had an oft-overlooked yet significant impact on British literature, involving questions of western stereotypes, political engagement, and geopolitical transformation.”
Details of the event, to be held in the Masaryk room on 27th January, 18:00 – 20:00, are here.
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Exhibition of watercolours inspired by Four Quartets, January 2026
An exhibition of watercolours by Janet Q Treloar, inspired by Eliot’s Four Quartets, is to be held at Wolfson College, Oxford.
Janet Treloar, who died in 2019, was a member of the Royal Watercolour Society, which she served six years as Vice-President, and was for many years on the Council of the Chelsea Arts Society. Her varied work, including works inspired by Eliot, can be seen on her website here.
The exhibition, which runs from 19th January to 20th March 2026, is open according to College commitments, and visitors are advised to check before attending; click the image to enlarge for details.
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Online talks on Eliot’s life and works, December 2025
An online forum on the evening of Wednesday 17th December will offer an opportunity to hear five speakers on aspects of “the spiritual, ethical and social vision” in Eliot’s life and works.
The speakers include Professor Jayme Stayer, author of the recent book Becoming T.S. Eliot; Dr Christina Lambert; and Professor Douglas Hedley of Clare College, Cambridge. Subjects include Eliot’s plays and Ariel poems, his “unconscious Christianity” in Four Quartets, what Eliot learned about suffering from Dante, and cannibalism in the works of T.S. Eliot.
Chaired by Simon Barrow under the auspices of the EICSP, an events-led Scottish charity, the event’s talks will last for 12 minutes each, followed by discussion among the speakers and the chair, followed by Q & A. Tickets are in the form of donations, starting at £10, and abstracts of the talks, further details of the speakers and booking are here.
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Two productions of Murder in the Cathedral, November 2025
Two forthcoming productions of TS Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral – one on air and one on stage – have been announced.
Marking the 90th anniversary of the play, an audio production of Murder in the Cathedralis to be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Saturday 27th December (“as close as Radio 4 schedules allow to the Feast of St Thomas Becket”).
Becket will be played by Danny Sapani, whose stage credits include, Jason in Medea at the National Theatre, ) Brutus in Julius Caesar at the Globe Theatre, and the title role in Out of Joint’s Macbeth. The broadcast is scheduled for 3pm on 27th December, and will be available for 31 days after that on BBC Sounds.
And although a year away, booking is opening now for a 2026 stage production of Murder in the Cathedral in Richmond and Bath, marking the return to the stage of David Suchet, who takes the central role of Thomas Becket. Under the auspices of the Orange Tree Theatre, the production will be staged with live choral music, heightening the drama’s ritualistic atmosphere, within the St John the Divine church in Richmond.
Performances are from 12th October to 7th November 2026 in Richmond; and then 10th to 21st November 2026 at the Theatre Royal, Bath.
Richmond details and booking are here ; Bath details and booking are here.
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Professor Robert Crawford to deliver 2025 Annual T.S. Eliot Lecture, October 2025
The Society is delighted to announce that the 2025 Annual T.S. Eliot Lecture will be delivered by Robert Crawford, author of the acclaimed two-volume biography. Young Eliot and Eliot After The Waste Land.
Professor Crawford’s lecture is titled ‘Tradition(s) and the Individual Talent’.
A poet, biographer, critic and literary historian, Robert Crawford is emeritus Professor of English at the University of St Andrews. His earlier book, The Savage and the City in the work of T.S. Eliot, examined Eliot’s twin concerns of primitive and metropolitan life, while his authoritative two-volume biography of Eliot was described as “compelling” and “magisterial”.
The Lecture will be delivered at Newnham College, Cambridge on Monday 27th October at 5:30pm. Admission is free and open to all, with entry on a first come, first served basis.
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Special preview of Adrian Dunbar’s staging of The Waste Land, October 2025
Details have been released of a special preview performance of the dramatised staging with jazz score of The Waste Land, directed by Adrian Dunbar.
On Tuesday 18th November – the day before its performances at the Royal Festival Hall – the work is to be performed in the rarely-accessible Middle Temple Hall in London.
“Built between 1562 and 1573 the main buildings have remained virtually unchanged to this day. It is probable that Queen Elizabeth I gave permission for the Hall to be built as she was the Inn’s landlord… The Hall’s superb, detailed architecture, impressive oak panelling and beautiful stained glass create a breathtaking and majestic atmosphere.”
Tickets are available for £30, £48 and £60; full details and booking are here. For details of the work’s two Festival Hall performances, scroll down to July when the performances were announced.
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Oxford production of ‘Murder In The Cathedral’ auditioning for performers, October 2025
Auditions are being held for a production of T.S. Eliot’s Murder In The Cathedral, to be staged at the Oxford Playhouse in April 2026.
The Oxford Theatre Guild, “Oxfordshire’s leading theatre company for non-professional actors”, have posted details of their audition process, which incorporates both group auditions for the Women of Canterbury Ensemble, and auditions for individual characters.
The process begins with a launch event in Oxford on Monday 3rd November, 8.00-9.30pm, and then continues with auditions during the following fortnight. Full details are here.
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Faber guided live reading of ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’, September 2025
Lavinia Greenlaw, Poetry Editor at Faber, is to host a guided lunchtime reading of ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’.
This will be the first in a series of lunchtime poetry events at Faber’s premises at The Bindery, 51 Hatton Garden, London EC1N 8HN. “For this first session, Lavinia has selected T.S. Eliot’s experimental early masterpiece published in 1915. We will listen to the poet’s own reading and will consider how Eliot, barely out of adolescence, explores both artistic ambition and the agony of the self-conscious youth.
“You’ll be given a list of resources for later exploration but this event will be a live encounter, showing you how to find a way into any poem and how a poem might come to meet you. A print-out will be available for you to annotate.”
This event is on Wednesday 5th November; doors will open at 12.45 p.m. and the event will end at approximately 1.50 p.m. Tickets are £5 to Faber Members (which is free to join) and full details and booking are here.
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New verse drama TOM to receive premiere in Oxford, September 2025
TOM, “a post-modern reimagining based on ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ and ‘The Waste Land’”, is to be staged at the Oxford University Church.
Created as a collaborative venture by the Oxford Literary Café Society, TOM is based on the life and works of T.S. Eliot. It has previously been described as “An unreal documentary, constructed so that fictional forms are confused and abutted – one of contemporary venture, memory and alliance. In essence, a post-modern reimagining of Eliot’s astonishing poetry and of modern literature and ideas.”
The work will be performed at the Church on 20th October at 7pm. Tickets are £10 (Concessions £5) available on the door. Click to enlarge image for details.
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T.S. Eliot evenings at Wilton’s Music Hall, September 2025
The atmospheric Wilton’s Music Hall in East London, which has hosted acclaimed performances of T.S. Eliot in the past, is to stage readings of ‘The Waste Land’ with ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.’
The readings will be performed by the stage and screen actor Nathaniel Parker. “I was lucky enough to read ‘The Waste Land’ at the Cheltenham Literary Festival a while back and fell in love with it,” he says. “The complexities and characters are thrilling to navigate.”
The evening will include a contextual preamble to ‘The Waste Land’ and T.S. Eliot for which Parker will be joined by director Giles Taylor.
There will be two performances, on Monday 15th and Tuesday 16th December. Tickets are priced between £10 and £27, and full details and booking are here.
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Live reading of Four Quartets, August 2025
As part of their spoken word series, the Marylebone Theatre, London is to stage a book-in-hand reading of Four Quartets.
The work will be read by Alfred Enoch, who appeared as Dean Thomas in all seven Harry Potter films, and as the lead actor in Romeo and Juliet and Pericles for the Globe and RSC; and Tim Crouch, a leading experimental theatre maker, whose An Oak Tree was a sell-out at the Young Vic.
The performance is on 29th September at 19:30; tickets are £10, and full details are here.
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The Waste Land to be performed in jazz festival, July 2025
A rare staging of an authorised multidisciplinary jazz presentation of The Waste Land is to be performed as part of the EFG London Jazz Festival.
Directed by Adrian Dunbar, with score by Nick Roth, the Unreal Cities setting of the poem is composed for four actors, film and jazz quintet. Joining for this performance is Guildhall Session Orchestra, a dynamic ensemble of talented alumni from Guildhall School of Music & Drama.
There will be two performances at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on London’s Southbank, on the evening of Wednesday 19th November, at 6pm and 8pm. Tickets are £27 + £3.50 booking fee, and full details and booking are here.
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A Day With T.S. Eliot, July 2025
CityLit in London is to hold a one-day tutored course with a focus on Eliot’s poetry.
A Day With T.S. Eliot “offers an introduction to one of the major poets of the twentieth century: T. S. Eliot. We will explore his poetry from his debut ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ to the modernist masterpiece The Waste Land, with wider references to his critical essays and other poetry.
“We will read texts from across Eliot’s career, with a focus on his poetry. Throughout, our attention will be on close, critical readings of the poems as we immersive ourselves in Eliot’s creative thinking.
“There will be opportunities to read the poems aloud and to test out different ways of engaging with the poetry, and to consider how Eliot’s literary influences shaped his writing”.
The course tutors are Dr. Suzannah V. Evans and Phyllis Richardson, whose full tutor biographies are on the page of course details.
The course is being held in London on 13th December from 10:30 to 4:30. The full fee is £69; seniors £55; and Concessions £45. Full details and booking are here.
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The 2025 Annual T.S. Festival at Little Gidding – tickets on sale, May 2025
Tickets are now on sale for this year’s annual T.S. Eliot Festival, at Little Gidding on Sunday 6th July..
Featuring talks and poetry, conversation and debate, and delicious food and wine, the Festival is a celebration of Eliot and of Little Gidding, and a chance to meet other Eliot scholars and enthusiasts. It takes place in the garden of Ferrar House at Little Gidding, Cambridgeshire, PE28 5RJ. and is an opportunity to visit the church of Little Gidding which inspired Eliot’s poem.
Sarah Kennedy will deliver this 
year’s Little Gidding Lecture, on Eliot’s Doubt. Author of T. S. Eliot and the Dynamic Imagination, she is the R.J. Owens Fellow in English at Downing College, Cambridge, and delivered the Annual T.S. Eliot Lecture in 2016 at Newnham College, Cambridge.
John Haffenden, Editor of 
The Letters of T.S. Eliot, will be talking in conversation about the imminent publication of Volume 10: 1942-44, a volume covering the period in which Eliot wrote Little Gidding and containing his exchanges of letters on the poem with John Hayward. In addition to the ongoing series of Letters, Professor Haffenden also edited the online publication of Eliot’s letters to Emily Hale.
Poet George Szirtes will be talking about his evolving relationship with Eliot’s poetry. In 2024 he was awarded His Majesty’s Gold Medal for Poetry, for “his deeply personal pieces of work, informed by his dual perspective, looking both east and west. “
Katherine Waterston will be the master of ceremonies for
‘My Favourite Eliot’, a chance for members of the audience to read aloud their favourite Eliot text. Waterston starred with Eddie Redmayne in the Fantastic Beasts film series and with Jodie Comer in The End We Start From (2023).
Charles Wide KC, will be leading a series of brief, informative tours of the Church which inspired Eliot’s last, great poem.
The Society will have a Festival stall, which will be selling Eliot First Editions, rare and out-of-print books and pamphlets, along with tote bags, bookmarks and other Eliot items. Print copies of the new edition of our Journal can be collected by members who have not claimed their copy, and back issues will be on sale, and you can chat to Committee members about Society activities and events.
Tickets for the day are £55 (Students £25), and include morning coffee, a two-course buffet lunch, and afternoon tea. Doors open at 11:00, the programme begins at 11:30, and the Festival concludes at 5:30.
Tickets are now on sale here.
Members of the TS Eliot Society UK can purchase Festival tickets at a special discounted price. Simply apply the current Members Password as promo code on the ticket purchase page.
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Four Quartets at St Stephen’s, Gloucester Road, May 2025
The London church at which TS Eliot worshipped and served as Churchwarden is staging an exhibition of paintings inspired by Four Quartets, with an event at which author AN Wilson will read from the poems.
From 2nd to 15th June, St Stephen’s, Gloucester Road will display TS Eliot and The Painted Word, twenty paintings by Jérémie Queyras, a painter based in Paris. Examples of his paintings are here.
And on the evening of Friday 6th June, in celebration of the exhibition, there will be an evening of music with poetry from Four Quartets narrated by the author and journalist AN Wilson.
“Following the event, there will be the opportunity to explore the art exhibition in greater detail, and speak with the artist. Refreshments will be available.”
Tickets are £10 (£8 concessions) and details and booking are here.
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A Midsummer Evening at Burnt Norton, May 2025
A fund-raising event for the CPRE, the countryside charity, offers an opportunity to explore the grounds of Burnt Norton.
“Guests will be welcomed by Lady Harrowby, who will share the fascinating history of Burnt Norton, including the fire which gave the house its name. Lady Harrowby will then lead a short promenade around the gardens of Burnt Norton offering insights into the estate’s connection to T.S. Eliot and his poetry.
“Guests will have the chance to wander the beautiful gardens, discover the Dry Pools and the Temple, and take in the breathtaking Gloucestershire countryside, before gathering in the marquee on the lawn, overlooking the manor house.
“As the evening unfolds, guests can savour delicious canapés and drinks, while enjoying the company of fellow countryside, heritage and literary enthusiasts. Lady Harrowby will discuss her latest book, The Pieces of Us (2024), and signed copies will be available for purchase by guests.And a raffle will also take place with proceeds supporting CPRE Gloucestershire’s ongoing efforts to champion and protect our countryside.”
The evening runs from 4pm to 8pm on Saturday 12th July. Tickets are £30 (£25 for CPRE members) and full details and booking are here.
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T.S. Eliot and Beethoven Quartet, April 2025
Two performances in May by the Julian String Quartet will pair ‘Little Gidding’ with Beethoven’s String Quartet Op 132. The evenings also include poetry by John Donne, and Purcell Fantazias.
The first event is on Saturday 10th May at 7:30pm in All Saints Church, Faringdon, where the reader will be Mary Nash; tickets are £20.
The second is on the following evening, Sunday 11th May, in The Lost Village of Dade, near Gravesend, where the reader will be Doug Chapman and the event will be by candlelight; tickets are £25.
Details and booking for both events are here.
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Four Quartets by Fiennes – screening and Q&A, April 2025
A special screening of the film Four Quartets, the performance by Ralph Fiennes translated from stage to screen, will be followed by a Q&A with both Ralph Fiennes and director Sophie Fiennes.
The original 2021 stage performance by Ralph Fiennes toured UK theatres, before being translated into film the following year by Sophie Fiennes. This will be screened on Monday 12th May, at the Ciné Lumière in London, followed by a Q&A with Sophie and Ralph Fiennes chaired by poet, playwright, and novelist Glyn Maxwell. Full details and booking are here.
UPDATE: A second screening, at 8:30 pm, with an intro, has been added to the above.
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Britten’s settings of Eliot’s poetry, April 2025
Two settings to music by Benjamin Britten of T.S. Eliot’s poetry feature among several works in a concert at London’s Barbican.
“The Journey of the Magi (Canticle IV, 1971) unites baritone, tenor and alto in a chilly memory-play – a recitation in which they recall the ‘hard time’ of their journey to the manger, sometimes united as one, sometimes diverging and adding independent detail.
“The Death of Saint Narcissus (Canticle V, 1974) trades the stability of piano accompaniment for the rippling waters of the harp, cutting the musical anchor and allowing the Saint – transfigured – to rise, weightless.”
The concert is on Wednesday 16th April, and details of the full concert programme and booking are here.
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‘Springtime Study of The Waste Land’, March 2025
The London Literary Salon is hosting a four-week online study via Zoom of ‘The Waste Land’.
“Over the course of four weeks we will celebrate the poem’s complexity, dig into its intertextuality and (above all) observe how it resonates with us today.
“Questions we might consider include: ‘How does this poem present modernity?’, ‘How does it explore the concepts of waste and the environment?’, ‘Is it a product of gritty realism or sublime mysticism?’ and, last but not least, ‘Why does it endure?’”
The course will be led by Dr Karina Jakubowicz, a graduate of University College London, Clare College Cambridge and Trinity College Dublin, who teaches at James Madison University Virginia and Florida State University. She is particularly interested in modernist representations of space and place.
The course will run online on Monday evenings from 6.00-8.00pm, between 7th and 28th April, and costs £120 for the four two-hour meetings. Further details of the course are here.
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New verse drama TOM on stage in Oxford, March 2025
A staged reading of TOM, a verse drama “founded upon” ‘The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock’ and ‘The Waste Land’, is to take place in Oxford on 31st March.
Created by The Oxford Literary Café Society, “This new verse drama, with an epic scope and both a painterly and literal style to be matched, is a love letter to T.S. Eliot.
“It is not just a radio or verse play, but an archaeology of original typescript, reverberations, human voices and ballad.”
The staged reading, at 7.30pm on 31st March, is in the Private Boudoir Lounge of The Castle pub, Paradise Street, Oxford. Admission is free, but as numbers are limited, email oxfordlit22@gmail.com in order to register.
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Dance work inspired by “The violet hour”, March 2025
The Dance International Glasgow festival is to feature a work inspired by a line from T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’.
In ‘The Violet Hour’, that “moment of temporal transition is reimagined in the performance by Colette Sadler as the merging of real and digital realities. In this work, the real time and space of theatre is submerged in the fictional reality of immersive 3D digital video and light.”
“Moving between real and digital realms, it proposes a surreal exploration of the relationship between humans and our surroundings, stretching the notion of how we are both influenced by and implicated in the changing ecologies around us.”
The performance is at Tramway in Glasgow on 21st May at 7:30pm, and full details are here.
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Explore Four Quartets in Ambleside, March 2025
A Lake District Quaker centre is offering a week-long course exploring T.S Eliot’s Four Quartets.
The course will run from Monday 21st to Friday 25th July, at the Glenthorne Quaker Centre & Guest House in Ambleside.
“Some contextual background will aim to place Four Quartets within Eliot’s wider work and life…The main focus however, will be on immersing ourselves in each poem, with open discussion and sharing the different ways in which they speak to us. We shall aim for depth, striving to understand the poems individually before attempting to see them as a whole.”
Details of the course are here and of the Centre and Guest House here.
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Celebrating the centenary of T.S. Eliot joining Faber, March 2025
An event at the London Review of Books will mark the 100th anniversary of T. S Eliot entering the world of publishing.
On 23 April 1925, Eliot was officially invited by Geoffrey Faber to join the newly founded publishing house of Faber & Gwyer. Among Faber & Gwyer’s first books was Eliot’s Poems 1909-1925, and as a “talent scout” for the company, which became Faber & Faber, Eliot launched the careers of poets such as W. H. Auden, Louis MacNeice, David Jones and Stephen Spender.
Exactly a hundred years on, poet and critic Mark Ford; Editor of Eliot’s Letters Professor John Haffenden; former Faber managing director Toby Faber; and Senior Lecturer at the University of Brighton Aakanksha Virkar will discuss the events leading up to Eliot’s appointment, and his early years with the firm that would become virtually synonymous with his name.
The event will take place at the London Review Bookshop on 23 April 2025 at 7pm. Tickets are £10 and can be booked here.
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Choral concert to include words by T.S. Eliot, February 2025
A concert by the choral ensemble The Sixteen is to feature words from TS Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral.
Good night, good night beloved is a special programme drawing on the connection of spoken word, with poetry by Rosetti, Wordsworth and Shelley as well as TS Eliot, accompanying the music of Byrd, Palestrina, Hildegard, Finzi, Sheppard and Stanford.
The programme includes ‘Here let us stand’ and ‘We praise Thee, O God’ from Murder in the Cathedral.
The concert is in St James’s Church, Egerton, near Ashford in Kent, on the evening of 6th July. Tickets are £25, booking opens on 14th April, and full details are here.
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Poetic exploration in Cornwall, January 2025
On Saturday 8th March at St Endellion Church, Port Isaac, Christopher Southgate will lead a poetic exploration of the line from ‘Burnt Norton’, “Human kind cannot bear very much reality”.
“Lent is a time of seeking to face up to our own situation, and considering possibilities for its transformation,” say the organisers, Endelienta Arts Events. “Southgate will use his own poetry, and Eliot’s from the time of his conversion, to aid our personal journeys of exploration.”
Dr Southgate is Professor of Christian Theodicy at the University of Exeter. His most recent poetry collection is Losing Ithaca, and he was author of a verse biography of T.S. Eliot – A Love and its Sounding. He is Editor of the Journal of the T.S. Eliot Society (UK).
Information about Christopher Southgate is here and booking for the Endelienta Arts event is here.
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For earlier events see
Events Archive 2023-2024
Events Archive 2021-2022
Events Archive 2019-2020
Events Archive 2017-2018
Events Archive 2012-2016