Its prominent location and beauty have prompted many mentions in literature. In "Oliver Twist" Charles Dickens notes how, as Nancy heads for her secret meeting with Mr Brownlow and Rose Maylie on London Bridge, "the tower of old Saint Saviour's Church, and the spire of Saint Magnus, so long the giant-warders of the ancient bridge, were visible in the gloom". The church's spiritual and architectural importance is celebrated in the poem "The Waste Land" by T. S. Eliot, who wrote, "the walls of Magnus Martyr hold/Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold". He added in a footnote that "the interior of St. Magnus Martyr is to my mind one of the finest among Wren's interiors".Of Magnus Martyr holdInexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold."The Waste Land and other poems", lines 263 to 265, Eliot, T.S.: Faber & Faber, London, 1940. For commentaries, see chapter 2 of "Anglo-Catholic in Religion – T.S. Eliot and Christianity" by Barry Spurr, 2010, and "Liturgical Influences of Anglo-Catholicism on The Waste Land and Other Works by T. S. Eliot" by A. Lee Fjordbotten, 1999 at Liturgical Influences. Spurr notes that St Magnus "was one of the leading shrines of the Anglo-Catholic movement and it is very notable that Eliot should not only refer to it, but, in the midst of a poem of almost unrelieved negativity, present it so positively (if somewhat uncomprehendingly) in terms of the exquisite beauty of its interior: its ‘Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold’ (the liturgical colours, we should note, of Eastertide and resurrection, a concept otherwise denied repeatedly throughout The Waste Land)".</ref> One biographer of Eliot notes that at first he enjoyed St Magnus aesthetically for its "splendour"; later he appreciated its "utility" when he came there as a sinner.