Recent correspondence with a friend has prompted me to contemplate what books I would include in a semester-long course on the Modern British Novel. My friend announced his intention to teach A Handful of Dust, which is my favourite of Evelyn Waugh’s early novels. Nonetheless, I couldn’t see myself teaching any novel by Waugh except his [...]
It is true that we can’t say with certainty what will happen in the future because it will depend on the choices we make. But we can be almost certain what will happen in the future based upon what we know about the past. It’s not often that I find myself disagreeing with G. K. [...]
Laughter is indeed divine, but it is also a great mystery which continues to elude the grasp of the philosopher and the mystic. “There’s nothing worth the wear of winning,” wrote Hilaire Belloc, “but laughter and the love of friends.” These words are personal favourites and have prompted much contemplation, as an earlier essay of [...]
I was still puzzled by the mystery of why Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn had permitted me, an unknown writer, to visit him for an interview when he had spurned the advances of many better-known authors. The mystery was solved by his wife, Natalya, soon after she had welcomed me. In my previous essay, we concluded with my [...]
On the morning after my arrival in Moscow, I was picked up at the appointed hour by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s eldest son, who drove me to Solzhenitsyn’s home, secluded deep within a wood of towering pine trees. As I stepped out of the car, I felt that I was stepping into the greatest adventure of my [...]
Hilaire Belloc’s "The Path to Rome" takes the reader on a journey into himself and out of himself, a voyage of discovery in which home and exile are interwoven in a mystical dance of contemplation. In its pages we discover the Europe of the Faith, which was, and is, the heart of Christendom, and the [...]
In days of relative darkness, when shadows envelope everything, we should seek the light that is reflected and refracted in our neighbors. As an Englishman, I have a tendency towards sun-worship. There’s a very good reason for this. England is a gloomy country in terms of the weather. It rains a lot, and even when [...]
Last month, in an essay entitled “Chesterton Meets the Devil”, I discussed the period of youthful morbidity which characterized Chesterton’s time at the Slade School of Art in the early 1890s. This gloom-laden period inspired “The Diabolist,” one of Chesterton’s darkest and most powerful essays. Published in Tremendous Trifles in 1909, it recounts an episode [...]
Today, Europe’s heroic heart—Poland, Hungary, and the Czech and Slovak republics—is again being attacked, this time by the forces of globalism, as the imperialists of the European Union seek to force these small but courageous countries to embrace the lunacy of cancel culture. There really are none so blind as those who will not see. [...]
Though known to posterity as a wit, a controversialist, and a Christian apologist, G.K. Chesterton considered himself primarily to be merely a “jolly journalist” and it was through the writing of essays for newspapers and magazines that he made both his reputation and his living. G.K. Chesterton is known to posterity as a wit, a [...]
G. K. Chesterton, a truly humble soul, enrapt in gratitude and wonder, was moved to contemplate the deepest meaning of gothic architecture. More than a century later, our own souls find themselves singing in harmony with Chesterton as they hear and contemplate the beauty of his voice, and the beauty of the song he is [...]
G.K. Chesterton is so full of wisdom and wonder, and sanity and sanctity, that it comes as a surprise to learn of his darker side. Yet there were two particularly dark and bitter periods in his life that should not be overlooked. The first was the unholy and unhealthy darkness that descended during a period [...]
Having been forced into retirement by the old-school Puritans, Shakespeare is now being routinely abused by a new generation of puritans who are equally obsessed with censoring the goodness, truth and beauty of his Muse. Once upon a time, it was frowned upon to condone rape and rapists on the stage. Today it seems to [...]
Why is it that those who like both G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis almost invariably prefer one to the other? This question is best answered with a sweeping generalization: There are two types of people in the world—hikers and walkers. Readers who are hikers prefer Lewis; readers who are walkers prefer Chesterton. There are two [...]