Chesterton

[sloth]

Can anyone recommend any books by G K Chesterton?

[mikewith]

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) wrote pioneering journalism (Eugenics and Other Evils) and pretty decent poetry, political tracts (What's Wrong with the World) and plays, biographies and assorted Catholic essays.

As far as fiction goes, the Father Brown Omnibus would be a good place to start. The Man Who Was Thursday, well received (though I haven't read it). The Napoleon of Notting Hill.

[sloth]

Thanks - I've started reading the Napoleon of Notting Hill and it is great - a little surreal - but he definitely had an amazing wit. Part Oscar Wilde, part Terry Pratchett it seems!

[allen ives]

The last writing by Chesterton that I read (about 25 years ago) started 'they were no better than n----rs or monkeys'...

13:08 Sun 02nd Jun 2002

[allen ives]

(the second para of my answer disappeared, so here again...)

Racism is racism, whether in the 1930s or today, and it is my contention that Chesterton's pernicious facism taints all his works.

[incitatus]

If a persons use of the language of the time damns them, who shall we ever read. Chesterton was biassed. He was violently pro catholic, certainly, and had a distrust of eastern religions (see the story "the Wrong Shape") that coloured all he wrote. But to describe him as a fascist is to abuse the term and the man. Many books of the period havephrases in them which are , to modern ears, deeply offensive but were part of idiom. ANother example is Winnifred Watsons "Miss pettigrew lives for a day" a fantastic early feminist comedy which contains the offensive phrase "There is something of the Jew about him". This doesnt stop the book being good, just makes it, thankfully, dated.