G. K. Chesterton

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) was born in Kensington, London, and worked most of his life as a journalist and essayist, writing for the Daily News and the Illustrated London News. A big man — six foot four, known for his cape, crumpled hat and swordstick — he made his name with the essay collections Heretics (1905) and Orthodoxy (1908) and the novel The Man Who Was Thursday (1908), then created the detective-priest Father Brown in The Innocence of Father Brown (1911) and The Wisdom of Father Brown (1914). He converted to Roman Catholicism in 1922 and died in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, in 1936.