Chesterton revisited DAN HITCHENS
Harbour Books £20
Invited to give a reading at the Catholic Poetry Society, G K Chesterton sat in miserable silence, unable to remember a single poem. ‘Will you recite The Donkey?’ someone asked. ‘Don’t know it,’ came the doleful reply. He brightened only when an audience member produced a volume by Chesterton’s friend Hilaire Belloc. ‘Ah! That’s real poetry.’
Perhaps no writer of Chesterton’s stature has exhibited such a complete lack of literary vanity. He
