The Archivist

Matthias is a quiet and solitary man, who has built for himself a cloistered orderly life as the curator of a literary archive. Among his responsibilities is the care of a collection of letters from T.S. Eliot to his lifelong friend Emily Hale, written as the poet’s tortured marriage was breaking apart, and sealed from public view until 2020.

It is to these letters that a young poet and research student, Roberta Spire, is drawn, convinced that they hold the secret of Eliot’s religious conversion. Determined, sensuous and bold, Roberta breaks into Matthias’s carefully structured existence, bringing the dark story of his own life into the light and driving him to uncharacteristic action.