The third volume of Archie Burnett's Collected Prose series presents T. S. Eliot's prose during the a turbulent decade. Covering the years 1936–1950, the collection spans the approach of the Second World War, the war itself, and its immediate aftermath. Eliot served as a London fire-warden during the Blitz and advocated a middle way between opposing totalitarianism, specifically one of Anglo-Catholicism. It is also the period in which Eliot produced some of his greatest achievements, namely Four Quartets, while maintaining his status as one of the leading cultural and religious voices in Britain, including winning the Nobel prize in literature in 1948.

What distinguishes this volume is the extent to which Eliot's criticism becomes inseparable from the larger question of civilization under pressure. Yet Eliot never abandons the practice of criticism itself. Some of the finest pieces in the volume are his studies of major figures from the English tradition, particularly his essays on poets and dramatists whose work he believed embodied a living continuity of culture. I've always found it edifying to witness how one great writer appraises another. Eliot remains an extraordinarily perceptive reader as he age.

The wartime context gives many of the essays a particular urgency. Eliot writes as a defender of cultural memory at a moment when Europe's intellectual inheritance appeared endangered. His recurring themes (tradition, authority, continuity, and belief) take on greater significance.

Burnett's editorial arrangement, which is chronological, allows readers to follow this development with unusual clarity. The volume demonstrates that Eliot's mature criticism was never just literary. It formed part of a larger effort to understand how culture survives periods of crisis and how great works of literature help preserve a society's moral and spiritual resources. This volume captures Eliot at the height of his authority: poet, critic, editor, religious thinker, and public intellectual.