Murder in the Cathedral

Why it’s on the list: T. S. Eliot’s verse play of Thomas Becket returning to Canterbury in 1170 knowing he will be killed — its subject is the temptation to do the right thing for the wrong reason.

Where I heard about it

• Founders Classical Academy — the last text of the eight-year sequence, on the twelfth-grade reading list at the classical school in Lewisville, Texas, posted by the Classic Learning Test in September 2026 as an example of what a classical curriculum assigns. It is the only text on the list written in the twentieth century about the twelfth, which is a strange and good note to end a formation curriculum on. The full sequence is on Founders Classical Academy Reading List.

About this edition

Eliot wrote the play for the Canterbury Festival in 1935. Becket is met by four tempters, the last and worst of whom offers him martyrdom itself, and the glory of it. After the murder the knights step forward and address the audience in flat modern prose to explain, reasonably, why it had to be done.

Connections

• Founders Classical Academy Reading List — the curriculum this came from; 56 unique titles across 5th through 12th grade.
• Classical Education — the movement whose canon this list is.
• T.S. Eliot
• Literature
• Religious Intellectualism