THOMAS BECKET, THE MAKING OF A SAINT

Before becoming Archbishop of Canterbury he was the sidekick of the king. What changed?

- ETTIE NEIL-GALLACHER

The murder of Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in the cathedral, just after Christmas, was the medieval equivalent of the assassination of JFK. It sent shock waves across the country and further afield. Small wonder then that his shrine became the most popular pilgrimage destination in England until the Reformation, and that his story has gone on to inspire poems, plays, paintings and books – even an opera.

The story that persists in the public imagination – of knights responding to a disgruntled monarch’s despairing lament by slaying the meddlesome cleric at the high altar on Christmas Day – isn’t entirely apocryphal. Indeed, one of the reasons it persists is its perennial popularity with writers. It was embedded in the canon of our literature in the 14th century by Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales and it has been trawled over on stage and screen, most famously in the 20th century by TS Eliot in his verse drama Murder in the Cathedral.