<p><b>** Chosen as a <i>New Statesman, Financial Times, Observer </i>and<i> Sunday Times </i>Book of the Year **</b><br><br><b>A riveting account of the making of T. S. Eliot¿s celebrated poem<i> The Waste Land</i> on </b><b>its centenary.</b><br><br><b>¿A rattling good story¿ </b><i><b>Sunday Telegraph</b></i><br><b>¿A work of art¿ </b><i><b>Times Literary Supplement</b></i><br><i><br>The Waste Land</i> has been called the ¿World¿s Greatest Poem¿. It is said to describe the moral decay of a world after war, to find meaning in a meaningless era. It has been labelled the most truthful poem of its time; it has been branded a masterful fake. A century after its publication in 1922, T. S. Eliot¿s enigmatic masterpiece remains one of the most influential works ever written, and yet one of the most mysterious.<br><br>In a remarkable feat of biography, Matthew Hollis reconstructs the intellectual creation of the poem and brings the material reality of its charged times vividly to life. Presen