COMMENTARY: After decades of neglect, new publications and academic interest suggest that Hilaire Belloc’s voice is once again being heard.
Many years ago, in 1980 to be precise, I first discovered the writing of G. K. Chesterton. As a naive 19-year-old, I had no idea what I was letting myself in for. Chesterton’s influence would be life-changing. Through my love of Chesterton, I also discovered the works of his great friend Hilaire Belloc. These two writers were comrades in arms, warriors for the cause of Christendom, whom George Bernard Shaw had dubbed the Chesterbelloc, melding them in his imagination as two halves of “a very amusing pantomime elephant.”
I became an unabashed disciple of the Chesterbelloc, spending hours in second-hand bookshops on the quest to discover new tomes by both men. At the time they were decidedly out of fashion. The spirit of theological modernism and the rising tide of relativism had made their robust Christian orthodoxy anathema, not merely in the wider secular culture but even in the Church. Their works were removed from libraries and were dumped unceremoniously onto the market for used books. It was not unusual to see an ex libris bookplate on the inside
