Literary Studies

Tarantula's Web: John Hayward, T.S. Eliot and their Circle by John Smart

Item: Tarantula's Web
Author: Steven Carroll

Reviewed by Steven Carroll •

November 2013, no. 356

Tarantula's Web: John Hayward, T.S. Eliot and their Circle

by John Smart

Michael Russell, £19.95 hb, 351 pp, 9780859553247

Literary Studies

Tarantula's Web: John Hayward, T.S. Eliot and their Circle by John Smart

Reviewed by Steven Carroll •

November 2013, no. 356

Private Eye said of Stephen Spender that he wasn’t so much famous as that he knew a lot of famous people. They might have said the same of John Hayward. His editorial and scholarly work notwithstanding, it’s doubtful that a biography of him would have been written had it not been for his close friendship with the premier poet of the twentieth century, T.S. Eliot.

Steven Carroll

Steven Carroll has spent time working as a teacher, musician, playwright, theatre critic, lecturer, and writer. He is the author of eight novels, including The Art of the Engine Driver and The Gift of Speed, which were both shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award; and The Time We Have Taken (2008), which won the Award in 2008.