When T. S. Eliot was writing 'The Dry Salvages' the question of American assistance for Britain's war effort was being debated. In the fourth of five talks about Eliot's Four Quartets, the poet, Peter Robinson , traces the writer's attempt to protect his poem from topical allusion while bringing about the 'intersection of the timeless with time'. With a reading of the poem by John Franklyn-Robbins