A period of Anglo-Catholic thought influenced Eliot's The Journey of the Magi (1927), Ash Wednesday (1930), and The Four Quartets (1943), a war commentary begun in 1935. He exercised versatility in a melodrama, Sweeney Agonistes (1932), and two stage works: The Rock (1934), a pageant with choruses, and Murder in the Cathedral (1935). The latter, a poetic drama commemorating a significant act of violence perpetrated by Henry II, was performed on the site of the assassination of Bishop Thomas à Becket at Canterbury Cathedral's Chapter House.
Subsequent works displaying Eliot's piety and religious philosophy include The Family Reunion (1939), The Idea of a Christian Society (1940), and The Cocktail Party (1950), the most successful of his stage dramas. A lighter work, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1940), is the basis for Cats, the longest-running production in stage musical history. Less noteworthy are The Confidential Clerk (1954) and The Elder Statesman (1958), both more suited to reading than to acting. Lauded as English literature's most incisive critic, Eliot surveyed a range of interests with Homage to Dryden (1924), The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933), Elizabeth Essays (1934), and On Poetry and Poets (1957).
In 1948, Eliot received the Nobel Prize for literature for his erudite treatment of modern sterility. He died in 1965; his ashes were interred in the village church of East Coker, the ancestral home of the Eliot family.
