Happy birthday, G. K. Chesterton.

Illustration of Chesterton from
Hearst's International (Nov 1921)

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born today in London in 1874. To honor the indefatigable critic, essayist, poet, novelist, children's party entertainer, and creator of wise sleuth Father Brown, you can do the following:

• Read his "A Defense of Detective Stories" (1901).

• Read his "The Admiral Eats His Hat: How to Write Detective Stories" (1921).  ". . . the very design of a detective story is a matter not of creation but of construction. . . . let the villain [be] . . . a very viper on the hearth."

• Read his "On Detective Novels" (1922). "...the detective story is . . . a drama of masks and not of faces."

• Watch Chesterton at Worcester College (1931).