The Sins of G.K. Chesterton demands our attention because, as Richard Ingrams notes in his introduction, the literature on this author is (with a few notable exceptions) horribly flawed — littered with misconstruction, omissions of fact and interpretive errors designed to present him as ‘an innocent, uncomplicated man, blessed with almost permanent happiness and having no experience of suffering — hence an ideal candidate for canonisation’. That flourish, appearing in Ingrams’s third to last paragraph, was a bombshell to me, though I understand there exists a sizeable constituency pressing for Chesterton’s beatification, rebuffed in 2019 when Bishop Peter Doyle of Northampton condemned his anti-Semitism.
Ingrams’s predecessors are guilty of trying either to ignore or to cleanse what-ever might blemish the appearance of saintly virtue. Ingrams instead provides a detailed explanation of how misplaced loyalty to his younger brother Cecil led Chesterton to adopt the anti-Semitic views of Hilaire Belloc, to whom Jews were un-British parasites, consisting largely of bankers and businessmen determined to take over the world.
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