David Jones (artist-poet) unusual, if not unique, in that he created admired and generally recognised important works both in the field of poetry and in the visual arts. However, according to the poet and critic Kathleen Raine, despite"the supreme quality of his art... he has never at any time been a widely-read, still less a fashionable, writer, nor is he ever likely to become so for his work is too subtle and learned for popular tastes" ("Sewanee Review", 1967). In 1938 T. S. Eliot called "In Parenthesis" a 'work of genius', and Graham Greene, in 1980, "among the great poems of the century".
T. S. Eliot for the authorship of one scene and the choruses. George Bell, the Bishop of Chichester, had been instrumental in connecting Eliot with producer E. Martin Browne for the production of "The Rock", and later commissioned Eliot to write another play for the Canterbury Festival in 1935. This one, "Murder in the Cathedral", concerning the death of the martyr, Thomas Becket, was more under Eliot's control. Eliot biographer Peter Ackroyd comments that "for [Eliot], "Murder in the Cathedral" and succeeding verse plays offered a double advantage; it allowed him to practice poetry but it also offered a convenient home for his