The Postmaster-General

Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953)

Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc was a British-French writer and historian and one of the most prolific writers in England during the early twentieth century. Belloc was also an orator, poet, sailor, satirist, writer of letters, soldier, and political activist. His Catholic faith had a strong impact on his works. He was President of the Oxford Union and later MP for Salford from 1906 to 1910. He was a noted disputant, with a number of long-running feuds. Belloc became a naturalized British subject in 1902 while retaining his French citizenship.

The prolific author of more than 150 books, Belloc wrote on a myriad of subjects, from warfare to poetry to the many current topics of his day. He has been called one of the Big Four of Edwardian Letters, along with H.G.Wells, George Bernard Shaw, and G. K. Chesterton, all of whom debated with each other into the 1930s. Belloc was closely associated with Chesterton, and Shaw coined the term Chesterbelloc for their partnership. His Cautionary Tales for Children; humorous poems with an implausible moral, are the most widely known of his writings. Supposedly for children, they, like Lewis Carroll's works, are more to adult and satirical tastes. Three of his best-known non-fiction works are The Servile State (1912) in which he criticized the modern economic order and parliamentary system, advocating distributism in opposition to both capitalism and socialism; Europe and Faith (1920) and The Jews (1922), a controversial book in which he prophesied the attitudes and impact of Nazi Germany on the Jews.

Sources: Goodreads; Wikipedia

G.K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton (1874-1936) was an English writer and literary critic. Born in London, England, he made his early name in writing as a journalist. He became known for his anti-imperialist attitudes which also included attacks on big business, technology and the monolithic state. These thoughts are reflected in his novels starting with The Napoleon of Notting Hill, published in 1904. He also wrote literary and art criticism but he is perhaps best known for his popular Father Brown detective series, an unassuming East Anglian priest who solves crime using intuitive methods. (Oxford Companion to English Literature)