Lecture 84: The Spice of Life
A Collection of Essays from Various Sources
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Discover Chesterton
Why the Interest in G.K. Chesterton?
Because he was the greatest writer of the 20th century. A convert to the Catholic Church, Chesterton wrote nearly a hundred books during his lifetime, and literally thousands of essays, in newspapers and magazines.
For newcomers to this website and to G.K. Chesterton, what is all the fuss about?
Lecture 83: The Man Who Was Orthodox
A Collection of Previously Uncollected Chesterton Material
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Lecture 82: Where All Roads Lead
A Book of Catholic Apologetics
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Lecture 81: Lunacy and Letters
Essays from The Daily News
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Lecture 80: The Glass Walking Stick
Essays from The Illustrated London News
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Lecture 77: The Common Man
A Collection of Essays from Various Sources
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Lecture 76: The End of the Armistice
Essays from G.K.’s Weekly that Prophesied World War II
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Lecture 75: The Coloured Lands
A Collection of Poems, Drawings, and Stories
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Lecture 74: The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond
Detective Stories Featuring Mr. Pond
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Lecture 72: Chesterton’s First Book?
Chesterton’s Ghost-Written Book About an Explorer in New Guinea
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Lecture 71: As I Was Saying
Essays from The Illustrated London News
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Lecture 70: The Well and the Shallows
The Sequel to “The Thing”
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Lecture 69: The Scandal of Father Brown
The Final Collection of the Padre Problem-Solver
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Lecture 68: Avowals and Denials
Essays from The Illustrated London News
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Lecture 67: St. Thomas Aquinas
The Best Book Ever Written on St. Thomas Aquinas
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Lecture 66: All I Survey
Essays from The Illustrated London News
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Lecture 65: Christendom in Dublin
Chesterton’s Account of Attending the World Eucharistic Conference in 1932
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Lecture 64: Sidelights on New London and Newer York
Essays that Include Accounts of Chesterton’s Second Trip to America
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Lecture 63: Chaucer
Literary Criticism About One of the Giants of English Literature
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Lecture 62: All is Grist
Essays from The Illustrated London News
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Lecture 61: The Resurrection of Rome
Chesterton’s Account of His Trip to Rome in 1929
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Lecture 60: Come to Think of It
Essays from The Illustrated London News
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Lecture 59: Four Faultless Felons
Detective Stories with a Twist
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Lecture 58: GKC as MC
37 Introductions by Chesterton to Other Books
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Lecture 56: The Poet and the Lunatics
Detective Stories Featuring Gabriel Gale
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Lecture 55: Generally Speaking
A Collection of Essays from The Illustrated London News
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Lecture 54: Robert Louis Stevenson
Chesterton’s Analysis of the Famous Scottish Writer
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Lecture 53: The Judgment of Dr. Johnson
Chesterton’s Play About the Great Samuel Johnson
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Lecture 52: The Secret of Father Brown
The Fourth in the Collection of Mysteries Featuring the Man in Cloth
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Lecture 51: The Collected Poems
Political Poems Written by a Patriot
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Lecture 50: The Return of Don Quixote
Chesterton’s Last Novel
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Lecture 49: The Catholic Church and Conversion
Chesterton’s Reflections on Conversion in General
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Lecture 48: The Queen of Seven Swords
Poetry About the Blessed Virgin Mary
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Lecture 47: The Outline of Sanity
The Textbook for Distributism
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Lecture 46: The Incredulity of Father Brown
The Third Collection of Stories Featuring the Clerical Sleuth
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Lecture 45: William Cobbett
An Introduction to One of Chesterton’s Heroes
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Lecture 44: The Everlasting Man
Chesterton’s Great Book of Apologetics
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Lecture 43: Tales of the Long Bow
Chesterton’s “Distributist Novel”
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Lecture 42: Superstitions of the Sceptic
A Debate with G.G. Coulton, Who Totally Misunderstands the Middle Ages
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Lecture 41: St. Francis of Assisi
The Best Book Ever Written on St. Francis
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Lecture 39: The Man Who Knew Too Much
Detective Stories Featuring Horne Fisher
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Lecture 38: The Ballad of St. Barbara and Other Poems
Chesterton’s Lesser-Known Epic Poem
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Lecture 37: What I Saw in America
Chesterton’s Account of His 1921 Trip to America
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Lecture 36: Eugenics and Other Evils
The Case Against a Scientifically-Designed Society
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Lecture 35: The New Jerusalem
Chesterton’s Account of His Trip to the Holy Land
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Lecture 34: The Uses of Diversity
Essays from Various Sources
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Lecture 33: The Superstition of Divorce
Chesterton’s Prophetic Views About Marriage and Family
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Lecture 32: Irish Impressions
Chesterton’s First Major Trip to Ireland
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Lecture 30: A Short History of England
Chesterton’s Complete and Cohesive Story of England
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Lecture 29: The Appetite of Tyranny
World War 1 Propaganda
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Lecture 28: Collected Poems
How Lepanto Found Its Way Into Print
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Lecture 27: The Wisdom of Father Brown
The Second Collection of the Priest-Detective
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Lecture 26: The Flying Inn
A Rollicking Novel About Prohibition, Filled with Drinking Songs
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Lecture 24: The Victorian Age in Literature
Literary Criticism of Nineteenth-Century English Writers
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Lecture 23: A Miscellany of Men
Essays from The Daily News
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Lecture 21: The Ballad of the White Horse
The Last Great Epic Poem in the English Language
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Lecture 20: The Innocence of Father Brown
The First Collection of Father Brown Stories
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Lecture 19: Appreciations and Criticisms
Introductions to Each of Charles Dickens’ Novels
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Lecture 18: William Blake
A Masterful Exploration of the Eighteenth-Century Mystic
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Lecture 17: Alarms and Discursions
Essays from The Daily News
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Lecture 16: What’s Wrong with the World
The Title Says it All
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Lecture 15: The Ball and the Cross
The Story of a Duel and a Debate
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Lecture 14: Tremendous Trifles
Essays Originally from The Daily News
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Lecture 13: George Bernard Shaw
A Thorough Analysis of Shaw
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Lecture 11: All Things Considered
Essays on “All Things”
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Why I Believe in Christianity
An explanation of why I think a religious philosophy necessary and why I think Christianity the best religious philosophy. – G.K. Chesterton
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Why I Am A Catholic
The Church is not merely armed against the heresies of the past or even of the present, but equally against those of the future. – G.K. Chesterton
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Skepticism and Spiritualism
An impartial person is a good judge of many things, but not of all. He is not (for instance) a good judge of what it feels like to be partial.
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St. Thomas Aquinas
St. Thomas confronts other creeds of good and evil, without at all denying evil, with a theory of two levels of good.
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The Religious Aim of Education
The deepest of all desires for knowledge is the desire to know what the world is for and what we are for.
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Miracles and Modern Civilisation
For, obviously, the mere fact that a thing happens seldom, under odd circumstances and with no explanation within our knowledge, is no proof that it is against natural law.
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Introduction to the Book of Job
The modern habit of saying, “This is my opinion, but I may be wrong” is entirely irrational.
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Buddhism and Christianity
It is no disgrace to Christianity, it is no disgrace to any great religion, that its counsels of perfection have not made every single person perfect.
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The Revival of Philosophy – Why?
Why the world needs metaphysics
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The Philosophy of Islands
To isolate a thing is to identify it
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Philosophy for the Schoolroom
The sanities and certainties of human free thought
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On Thoughtless Remarks
The corrupting effect of casual and conversational scepticism
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Child Psychology and Nonsense
Putting nonsense in the wrong place
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The Orthodoxy of Hamlet
Chesterton’s essay on Shakespeare’s Hamlet
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A Midsummer Night’s Dream
The greatest of Shakespeare’s comedies, in Chesterton’s opinion
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History Versus the Historians
On the benefits of studying history by reading the actual text of the time
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Getting to Know the Middle Ages
Modern ignorance about the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries
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Anti-Religious Thought in the Eighteenth Century
On the eclipse of Christian theology during the rationalist advance
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The Meaning of the Crusade
An analysis of one of the most misunderstood events in Christian history
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Government and the Rights of Man
Lamenting the intrusion of government on the rights of man
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Democracy and Industrialism
The fading vision of democracy in our time
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