"In his latest book, Atkins brings his characteristic clarity and incisiveness to the previously unexamined relation between Lancelot Andrewes and T.S. Eliot, as mutually influential friends whose writings prefigure the theoretical nuances of latter twentieth-century literary culture. Through Atkins' erudition and eye for essentials, Andrewes' sense of the via media provides a lens to Eliot's dialectical spirit: his pleasures, his difficulties, his art. Rarely does theory meet close-reading with such illuminating grace." - Bruce Bond, Regents Professor of English, University of North Texas, USA and author of Choir of the Wells