Category: events

The third of five annual lectures inspired by T. S. Eliot’s impact on modern literature will be given by Stephen Pinker, one of the world’s leading authorities on language and the mind and Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard.  The lecture, entitled Pessimism in a World of Progress, will be followed by an interview with Will Self. READ

Four Quartets – a performance of dance and music, alongside a reading of the poems – premiered last week at Bard College’s Summerscape festival in New York. This was the first authorised performance based on T. S. Eliot’s sequence of poems with choreography by Pam Tanowitz, music by Kaija Saariaho, images by Brice Marden and a reading of Four Quartets by Kathleen Chalfont. READ

First performed in 2015 as part of the Beckett Festival, now revived as part of the Mountains to Sea literary festival in 2018 by kind permission of the T. S. Eliot Estate, this performance remains true to the rhythms and references of 1922. READ

On 16 May 2017 the University of London is hosting a special event, to mark the centenary of T. S. Eliot’s association with the university.

Professor Ronald Schuchard will deliver the inaugural 1858 Charter Lecture, entitled ‘Eliot in the Wartime Classroom 1916–1919’, which will focus on Eliot’s early writing, much of which was shaped during his time as an extension tutor for the University of London. READ

The 2017 T. S. Eliot Memorial Lecture will be given by Professor Marina Warner on Wednesday 15th March, titled as follows:

‘What place is this, what land, what quarter of the globe?’: The compass of story in dislocated times.

Against the background of the current refugee crisis, Professor Warner will look at migrating stories, from myths of Troy to Eliot’s uses of Christian legend, tracing the compass bearings they offer. READ