Books, Arts & Manners: Belloc’s Boswell

Hilaire Belloc: A Biography, by A. N. Wilson (Atheneum, 398 pp., $17.95)

The figure in the history of English letters who best bears comparison with Hilaire Belloc is Doctor Johnson. Both were larger than life in natural generosity and wit, religious in eccentric ways, by turns appalling, bullying, and endearing in personal habits and relations. Both were also geniuses who now go largely unread. Johnson survives mainly through Boswell. Belloc, though A. N. Wilson has done a remarkably good job in this book, seems doomed forever to lack the wider audience he deserves.

RR

About the Author

Robert Royal

Robert Royal is editor in chief of The Catholic Thing and president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. His most recent book is A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century.

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Hilaire Belloc: A Biography, by A. N. Wilson (Atheneum, 398 pp., $17.95)

The figure in the history of English letters who best bears comparison with Hilaire Belloc is Doctor Johnson. Both were larger than life in natural generosity and wit, religious in eccentric ways, by turns appalling, bullying, and endearing in personal habits and relations. Both were also geniuses who now go largely unread. Johnson survives mainly through Boswell. Belloc, though A. N. Wilson has done a remarkably good job in this book, seems doomed forever to lack the wider audience he deserves.

RR

About the Author

Robert Royal

Robert Royal is editor in chief of The Catholic Thing and president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. His most recent book is A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century.