TS Eliot and The Blitz [30min]

British Shakespeare scholar and literary biographer Jonathan Bate presents a series which examines historical events through the poetry they inspired. Jonathan visits the sleepy village of Shamley Green and the roof of St Paul's Cathedral, in the company of the historian Jose Harris and Eliot expert Ian Smith. They find that the poems were written in the early years of the Second World War, and that Eliot's famous text is filled with the daily sights and sounds of wartime Britain.