A rediscovered story of unrequited love which reveals an intimate new portrait of the poet T. S. Eliot - and of its author, a formidable and passionate woman.

'Completely fascinating, revelatory . . . A classic of its kind.' WILLIAM BOYD
'Compelling . . . compulsive.' MARGARET DRABBLE, NEW STATESMAN

T.S. Eliot and Mary Trevelyan shared a close friendship - twenty-five years in each others' company: playing records; going for drives with Mary at the wheel; sharing dinners Eliot cooked in his rolled-up shirtsleeves; and attending church together. While Mary hoped it might become something more, the poet's heart was elsewhere. Using a collection of diaries, letters and pictures Mary left behind, Erica Wagner brings together this story of an unusual friendship in this intimate portrait of T.S. Eliot and Mary, a formidable woman thus far sidelined by literary history.