The Modern World: Ten Great Writers — Season 1, Episode 9: T.S. Eliot: The Waste Land

Episode synopsis

Read by noted actors Michael Gough, Edward Fox, and Eileen Atkins, T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land powerfully expresses the disillusionment and disgust of the post–World War I era in Europe. In this program, Professor Frank Kermode, of Cambridge University; Eliot biographer Peter Ackroyd; and poets Sir Stephen Spender and Craig Raine examine the complex nature of Eliot’s influential poem, analyze its appeal, and trace the reasons why it became one of the best-known emblems of the 20th century.

About The Modern World: Ten Great Writers

This documentary series uses drama and commentary to shed light on the lives and works of Joseph Conrad, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, T. S. Eliot, Henrik Ibsen, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann, Luigi Pirandello, Marcel Proust and Virginia Woolf.

More episodes from Season 1

• E1James Joyce: Ulysses
• E2Joseph Conrad: The Secret Agent
• E3Fyodor Dostoyevsky's 'Crime and Punishment'
• E4Marcel Proust: A la recherche du temps perdu
• E5Thomas Mann: The Magic Mountain
• E6Henrik Ibsen: The Master Playwright
• E7Virginia Woolf: Mrs. Dalloway
• E8Luigi Pirandello: In Search of an Author
• E10Franz Kafka: The Trial
• E11Ten Great Writers: The Seminar