An essayist, publisher, playwright, literary and social critic and one of the 20th century's major poets. Born in St. Louis in the USA, he moved to the UK in 1914 at the age of 25 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927.

He attracted widespread attention for his poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915), which is seen as a masterpiece of the Modernist movement. It was followed by some of the best-known poems in the English language, including The Waste Land (1922), The Hollow Men (1925), Ash Wednesday (1930) and Four Quartets (1945). He is also known for his 7 plays, particularly Murder in the Cathedral (1935).

He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948.