Thomas Becket - Legacy

Legacy

• Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales is set in a company of pilgrims on their way from Southwark to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral.
• The story of Becket's life became a popular theme for the medieval Nottingham Alabaster carvers. One set of Becket panels is displayed in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
• Modern works based on the story of Thomas Becket include T. S. Eliot's play Murder in the Cathedral, Jean Anouilh's play Becket, which was made into a movie with the same title, and Paul Webb's play Four Nights in Knaresborough. Webb has adapted his play for the screen and sold the rights to Harvey and Bob Weinstein. The struggle between Church's and King's power is the main theme of Ken Follett's novel The Pillars of the Earth, of which one of the last scenes features the murder of Thomas Becket.
• The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a nonprofit, nonpartisan, interfaith, legal and educational institute dedicated to protecting the free expression of all religious traditions, took its inspiration and namesake from Thomas Becket.
• In a 2006 poll by BBC History magazine for "worst Briton" of the previous millennium, Becket came second behind Jack the Ripper. The poll was dismissed as "daft" in The Guardian, and the result disputed by Anglicans and Catholics. Historians had nominated one person per century, and for the 12th century John Hudson chose Becket for being "greedy", "hypocritical", "founder of gesture politics" and "master of the soundbite". The magazine editor suggested most other nominees were too obscure for voters
• There are many churches named after Thomas Becket in Great-Britain, including Church of St Thomas the Martyr, Monmouth, St Thomas à Becket Church, Pensford, St Thomas à Becket Church, Widcombe, Church of St Thomas à Becket, Capel, St Thomas the Martyr, Bristol and St Thomas the Martyr's Church, Oxford. and in France, including Église Saint-Thomas de Cantorbéry at Mont-Saint-Aignan (Upper-Normandy), Église Saint-Thomas-Becket at Gravelines (Nord-Pas-de-Calais), Église Saint-Thomas Becket at Avrieux (Rhône-Alpes), Église saint-Thomas Becket at Bénodet (Brittany), etc.