“The average church-goer”, writes Hyam Maccoby, “would be most disconcerted by a real glimpse into Eliot’s mind. There is a savagery in that mind”. Eliot aspired towards classicism and adopted the persona of the prim and pedantic “Mr. Eliot”. But this book argues that, in his greatest poetry, Eliot was essentially a Romantic whose Christian vision was based on pagan rituals of human sacrifice. Maccoby positions Eliot’s antisemitism within his artistic philosophy.

The book is intended for the general reader who responds emotionally to Eliot’s complex poetry and would like to gain an intellectual understanding of it.

These essays contain a trenchant critique of Christianity by a controversial Jewish historian and theologian, but one who had a deep knowledge and understanding of and respect for Christianity, just as he had the greatest admiration for Eliot’s poetry, with its powerful evocation of “the boredom, and the horror, and the glory”.