This is an attractive biography because Chesterton is an attractive figure. He was a journalist and always kept up his passion for politics and history, literature and philosophy, Christianity and family.

Gilbert lived from 1874 to 1936. His was the London of the Victorian era and World War I, Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells, socialism and capitalism, the theories of Marx and Malthus, Freud and Nietzsche, Comte and Darwin.

He dearly loved controversy and debate, and with his dazzling gifts for speech and writing he was a bull in the china-shop of his time. But he only made friends, for his kindness and sense of humor were as great as his corpulence and his appetite.

To follow Chesterton in his reasoning is a necessary pleasure in the post-truth era.