Slightly Foxed > An Index to Slightly Foxed > Chesterton, G. K.

Chesterton, G. K.

The Man Who Was Thursday, [39] 24; Tremendous Trifles, [52] 43

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20161201144917 John Watson, Croquet - Gordon Bowker, GK Chesterton

Chesterton’s Spell

Gordon Bowker on G. K. Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles

Whenever I’m asked who my favourite schoolteacher was, I don’t hesitate. His name was Bill Drysdale and he taught me English when I was barely into my teens. He was tall and charismatic, with a dark beard and a beautiful bass voice. The thing we most loved about Bill, however, was that from time to time, instead of teaching us grammar, he would read us a story instead. I remember him reading Thornton Wilder’s The Bridge of San Luis Rey and Aldous Huxley’s The Gioconda Smile. But best of all, he introduced us to G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown Stories.
20130901104521 William Palmer on G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday

A Peal of Perfect Thunder

William Palmer on G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday

When, a few years later, I started to read G. K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday, I thought how feeble we were as revolutionaries compared to the seven anarchists of that book – at the beginning of the book anyway, for it has many surprises up its sleeve. Of all of Chesterton’s stories this novel, published in 1908, is the most fantastic and ultimately mysterious. Chesterton was profoundly religious and politically conservative, and he regarded with horror a world in which, as now, revolutionaries demanded attention by indiscriminate bombings and assassinations.

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