A new original recording of a classic public domain text, read and performed by Simon Stanhope for Bitesized Audio.
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Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936) was an English author, theologian, philosopher and critic, who produced a vast output of fiction, poetry and journalism. His writings covered a wide variety of subjects, from detective fiction to Christianity. His most famous novel is probably the "metaphysical thriller" "The Man Who Was Thursday" (1908), but his most famous fictional creation is surely Father Brown, the Catholic priest-detective who appeared in more than 50 news published episodically. between 1910 and 1936. In complete contrast to his (almost) contemporary Sherlock Holmes, Father Brown is calm, unpretentious and solves crimes with instinct, intuition and a deep understanding of human nature.
"The Blue Cross" was the first story to feature the character of Father Brown, although the main protagonist of this adventure is actually the French detective Valentin, who pursues Flambeau, a criminal celebrity. (Flambeau was to appear in many of Father Brown's later tales, after renouncing a life of crime and becoming a detective himself.) The story was first published in the United States, on July 23, 1910, in the Saturday Evening Post of Philadelphia, under the headline "Valentine Follows a Curious Trail". It was later published in London in the September 1910 issue of Story-Teller magazine, and the following year as the first story of "The Innocence of the Father Brown,” the first of several books that make up the Father Brown series.
Small size audio recording 2020.
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