Reassessing the Chesterbelloc

Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton were two of the biggest names on the Georgian literary scene. They were what today would be called 'public intellectuals'. Each wrote nearly a hundred books in a variety of genres and on a huge range of subjects. But they are now almost entirely unread. The author argues that it is time to reassess their achievement. He maintains that, while their work is uneven and some of it is frankly ephemeral, their best work deserves to be rediscovered and read without bias. They will then be seen as writers who offered a robust critique of modernity, and thereby have provided us with resources with which to question and challenge the facile ideas, ingrained prejudices, and lazy assumptions of the ambient culture.