Publisher's Synopsis
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) was an English writer, philosopher, lay theologian, and literary and art critic. As an author he created the fictional priest-detective Father Brown, and produced several notable works on apologetics including Orthodoxy (1908) and The Everlasting Man (1925). He routinely referred to himself as an 'orthodox' Christian, and came to identify this position more and more with Catholicism, eventually converting to Catholicism from High Church Anglicanism. He was born in Kensington, educated at St Paul's School, and later attended the Slade School of Art, a department of University College London, to become an illustrator. He also took classes in literature at UCL but did not complete a degree in either subject. His first positions were within publishing houses, during which time he also became a freelance art and literary critic, and in 1902 the Daily News gave him a weekly opinion column, followed in 1905 by a weekly column in the London Illustrated News for which he continued to write for the next 30 years. In 1901 he married Frances Blogg who played a large role in his career as amanuensis and personal manager. Throughout the course of his career Chesterton wrote around 80 books, several hundred poems, some 200 short stories, 4,000 essays, and several plays. His writings consistently displayed wit and a sense of humour, and he would often employ paradox while making serious comments on the world, politics, economics, philosophy, theology, and many other topics. In The Crimes of England, published in 1916 in the middle of the First World War, Chesterton takes a satirical look at instances over the preceding 300 years where he considers English policy was too pro-German (or too pro-Prussian). The 'crimes' he sites include too great a support for Frederick the Great and too little for the French Revolution, and England's brutal response to the Irish rebellions of 1789, worsened by the German element within the royal family and the army's use of German mercenaries against th Irish. The book should be seen as very much a product of its time when anti-German feeling was, inevitably, at its height.
