Word: belloc
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...trouble about gifted men is that they can never escape their gifts. Hilaire Belloc was gifted, and though he wrote millions of words of prose, scored thousands of arguments, everything finally was resolved in rhyme, which was his gift. Nothing in his histories, noted for their dogged Catholicism, is more scathing than his four lines about Protestant Queen Anne's Lord Treasurer, Godolphin...
...Belloc's grandmother came from a noted Anglo-Irish family; his father was a French lawyer; his mother was a distinguished English suffragette. He was born near Paris and, though educated at Oxford, retained his French nationality long enough to be drafted into the French army. At 32 he became a British subject, and later was elected to the House of Commons. Of his nationalistic duality he wrote...
...Belloc held that "all political questions are ultimately theological." In the debate with the rationalists, he became chief Roman Catholic protagonist, wrote political novels as a counterblast to those of H. G. Wells, pamphlets at George Bernard Shaw and the Fabian Socialists. He converted G. K. Chesterton to the Roman Catholic Church, and a critic has described Shaw addressing the formidable Chesterton: "But there dawned a day?a terrible day for you?when Hilaire Belloc loomed into your life. Then indeed you were lost forever. He made you dignify your monstrosities with the name of Faith . . . he turned your pranks...
...poem of hate to the "Remote and ineffectual Don that dared attack my Chesterton" is in the anthologies. Together Belloc and Chesterton created the modern legend of a medieval England vigorous in its earthy Christianity, bluff country squires, boon companions, Catholic piety and roistering taverns. Sang Belloc...
...predecessors of 20 years ago had it even rougher: no champagne or Scotch to wash the stuff down with ... At least, in this age of lavender-pink potatoes and policies, Sir Roger does not have to face the grim protocol of Prohibition, which moved the compassion of Hilaire Belloc...