IN 1927, the Bloomsbury publisher Faber and Gwyer (Faber & Faber from 1929) announced a new series of booklets suitably decorated in colours and dressed in the gayest wrappers', featuring Christmas-themed poems. With artwork supplied by established and rising talents, such as Paul and John Nash, Eric Ravilious, Eric Gill and Edward McKnight Kauffer, the publisher hoped they would find a place in the Christmas gift market. Thomas Hardy, G. K. Chesterton, W.B. Yeats and Siegfried Sassoon were among those who contributed poems to the series. T. S. Eliot, who had joined Faber two years earlier as a literary editor, having left his City job in Lloyds Bank's Colonial and Foreign Department, was to write six of what became known as The Ariel Poems. The first of these was Journey of the Magi.
The publication of the poem at Christmas 1927 came at a timely moment in Eliot's life, after his reception into the Church of England earlier that year. Eliot later explained that the poem asked the question: How fully was the Truth revealed to those who were inspired to recognise Our Lord so soon after the Nativity?'
The poem was framed around the Biblical journey of the three kings, or wise men, who came from the East to pay homage to the baby Jesus in Bethlehem. The power of the verse lay in the way Eliot turned it into a first-person narrative by one of the magi. Rather than a joyous pilgrimage, he described an arduous trek through the very dead of winter? With references to such a long journey', with camels galled, sore-footed', moving through cities hostile and towns unfriendly, it became a metaphor for the voyage Eliot believed the human spirit must make to experience Christ.
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Happiness in small things
Putting life into perspective and forces of nature in farming
Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
Three of the top 10 operas performed worldwide are by the emotionally volatile Italian composer Giacomo Puccini, who died a century ago. Henrietta Bredin explains how his colourful life influenced his melodramatic plot lines
The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
The distinction between plums, damsons and bullaces is sweetly subtle, boiling down to flavour and aesthetics, but don’t eat the stones, warns John Wright
Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds
