The story of a friendship: T.S. Eliot and B. Russell

The article contains an attempt to reconstruct the communication of two thinkers of the 20th century – Bertrand Russell (1872‒1970) and Thomas Sterns Eliot (1888‒1965). Particularly detailed is the short time span of 1914‒1917, when their communication was most intense. This reconstruction is based on letters of T.S. Eliot and letters of B. Russell, Russell’s Autobiography, as well as two bi­ographies: Ray Monk Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude (1996) and Robert Crawford Young Eliot: From St Louis to the Waste Land (2015). Some cultural features of British society in the first third of the 20th century are shown by the example of communication between these two thinkers.