Father Brown is a fictional Catholic priest and amateur detective who features in 53 short stories published between 1910 and 1936 written by the English novelist GK Chesterton.[1] Father Brown solves mysteries and crimes using his intuition and deep understanding of human nature. Chesterton based it loosely on the Rt Rev. Msgr. John O'Connor (1870–1952), vicar of Bradford, involved in Chesterton's conversion to Catholicism in 1922.[1]
Gilbert Keith Chesterton KC*SG (29 May 1874 – 14 June 1936) was an English writer[2], philosopher, secular theologian, and literary and artistic critic. He has been nicknamed the "prince of paradox".[3] Time magazine observed his writing style: "Wherever possible, Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs, allegories, first carefully turning them inside out./" [ 4]
Chesterton created the fictional priest-detective Father Brown and wrote on apologetics. Even some of those who disagreed with him recognized the broad appeal of works such as Orthodoxy and The Everstanding Man.[4][6] Chesterton regularly presented himself as an "orthodox" Christian and came to increasingly identify this position with Catholicism, eventually converting to Catholicism from High Church Anglicanism. Biographers have identified him as the successor to Victorian authors such as Matthew Arnold, Thomas Carlyle, Cardinal John Henry Newman, and John Ruskin.[7] Of his contributions, TS Eliot wrote:
He was important and constant on the side of the angels. Behind the Johnsonian disguise, so reassuring to the British public, he hid the most serious and revolutionary designs, concealing them by revealing them…Chesterton's social and economic ideas…were fundamentally Christian and Catholic. He did more, I think, than any man of his time – and was able to do more than anyone, because of his particular background, his development and his abilities as a public artist – to maintain the existence of the significant minority in the modern world. . He leaves behind a permanent right to our loyalty, to ensure that the work he accomplished in his time continues with us.
Please take the opportunity to connect and share this video with your friends and family if you find it useful.
