Issue: Winter 2020
Chesterton’s 1908 novel, The Man Who Was Thursday, has attracted wide appreciation over the past century, but has recently been found to be popular among professional spies. Karl Schmude provides the background to this discovery, and identifies others who have prized the novel, in particular the English author, Kingsley Amis.
This report highlights two Chesterton collections – one at the University of Notre Dame’s campus in London, the other at Campion College Australia in Sydney – and outlines the findings of an American student who devoted his major undergraduate thesis to Chesterton’s ideas of vocation.
The distinguished Chesterton biographer and editor, Denis J. Conlon, died on May 7, 2020 at the age of 88. Nancy Brown recalls the range and importance of his contributions to Chesterton scholarship.
The English feature writer and book reviewer for the London Catholic Herald, Francis Phillips, ponders the continuing significance of the English Catholic apologist, Msgr Ronald Knox.
Monica Devine, a wife and mother who manages a family law practice in Wellington, New Zealand, recalls her accidental discovery of Chesterton and describes her efforts to promote his writings in New Zealand.
In 2018 the American author and editor, Joseph Epstein, reflected on his lifelong reading habits, highlighting various principles of evaluation that are remarkably Chestertonian, including the ways in which relevancy often happens by chance rather than design.