Gilbert K. Chesterton – författare

In Heretics, Gilbert K. Chesterton rails against what he sees as wrong with society. He points out how society has gone astray and how life and spirituality could be brought back into focus. It is foolish, generally speaking, for a philosopher to set fire to another philosopher in Smithfield Market because they do not agree in their theory of the universe. That was done very frequently in the last decadence of the Middle Ages, and it failed altogether in its object. But there is one thing that is infinitely more absurd and unpractical than burning a man for his philosophy. This is the habit of saying that his philosophy does not matter, and this is done universally in the twentieth century, in the decadence of the great revolutionary period.- G. K. Chesterton

In Manalive we follow the madcap adventure of Innocent Smith. Innocent Smith is a man who keeps the commandments but breaks all the conventions, and while doing so he shows us just how absurd those conventions are. Follow him as he breaks into his own house, and then carries on a torrid affair with his own wife. Enjoy a picnic on the roof and then leave home just for the sake of returning home. A joyous and uplifting book.

Harold March, the rising reviewer and social critic, was walking vigorously across a great tableland of moors and commons, the horizon of which was fringed with the far-off woods of the famous estate of Torwood Park. He was a good-looking young man in tweeds, with very pale curly hair and pale clear eyes. Walking in wind and sun in the very landscape of liberty, he was still young enough to remember his politics and not merely try to forget them. For his errand at Torwood Park was a political one; it was the place of appointment named by no less a person than the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Howard Horne, then introducing his so-called Socialist budget, and prepared to expound it in an interview with so promising a penman. Harold March was the sort of man who knows everything about politics, and nothing about politicians. He also knew a great deal about art, letters, philosophy, and general culture; about almost everything, indeed, except the world he was living in.

In What's Wrong With The World Chesterton rightly points out that what people see as "wrong with the world" are only the symptoms of a deeper problem. He shows that our governments, be they capitalistic or socialistic, also fail to see the deeper problem. With a keen wit and lively prose he cuts directly to the true problems that society must deal with and his solutions feel utterly correct.

In The Man Who Was Thursday we are transported to a surreal turn-of-the-century London, Gabriel Syme, a poet, is recruited to a secret anti-anarchist taskforce at Scotland Yard. Lucian Gregory, an anarchist poet, is the only poet in Saffron Park, until he loses his temper in an argument over the purpose of poetry with Gabriel Syme, who takes the opposite view. After some time, the frustrated Gregory finds Syme and leads him to a local anarchist meeting-place to prove that he is a true anarchist. Instead of the anarchist Gregory getting elected, the officer Syme uses his wits and is elected as the local representative to the worldwide Central Council of Anarchists. The Council consists of seven men, each using the name of a day of the week as a code name; Syme is given the name of Thursday. In his efforts to thwart the council''s intentions, however, he discovers that five of the other six members are also undercover detectives; each was just as mysteriously employed and assigned to defeat the Council of Days. They all soon find out that they are fighting each other and not a real anarchists; such was the mastermind plan of the genius Sunday. In a dizzying and surreal conclusion, the six champions of order and former anarchist ring-leaders must chase down the disturbing and whimsical Sunday, the man who calls himself "The Peace of God."