Series:

Capuchin Classics

2 total works

Cover of The Napoleon of Notting Hill
His robes were red, according to the King's heraldry, and alone among the Provosts he was girt with a great sword. This was Adam Wayne, the intractable Provost of Notting Hill.' The Napoleon of Notting Hill is G K Chesterton's first novel. Published in 1904, it is set at the end of the twentieth century. London is still a city of gas lamps and horse-drawn vehicles, but democratic government has withered away, and a representative ordinary citizen is simply chosen from a list to be king. Auberon Quin, a government clerk, something or an aesthete and even more of a joker, becomes king. Purely for his own entertainment he transforms the boroughts of London into medieval city states, with heraldic coats of arms and colourfully uniformed guards, governed by provosts in splendid robes. Then he encounters Adam Wayne, the dedicated young provost of Notting Hill, who takes Quin's ideas more seriously than the king himself. When the other boroughs try to force a new road through Notting Hill, Wayne, convinced that small is beautiful, fights to defend his territory. This book is intended for students of English literature, especially of the Edwardian novel, from A level up.

Cover of The Incredulity of Father Brown

The third volume of stories featuring the cunning clerical sleuth Father Brown. Ahead of a new series of the popular BBC adaptation starring Mark Williams, all five of Chesterton's original Father Brown books have been republished with charming and collectible Penguin covers.

'That sort of thing may be very well for crypts and cloisters and all sorts of moonshiny places. But ghosts can't get through a closed door in an American hotel.'

Father Brown, the shrewd and modest clerical detective, encounters miracles, ghosts and prophets in this third volume of ingeniously plotted tales. From South America to New York, his keen observation and quiet wisdom are a match for any mystery - even when he finds himself missing, presumed dead, in his own coffin ...

G. K. Chesterton was born in 1874. He attended the Slade School of Art, where he appears to have suffered a nervous breakdown, before turning his hand to journalism. A prolific writer throughout his life, his best- known books include The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1922), The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) and the Father Brown stories. Chesterton converted to Roman Catholicism in 1922 and died in 1938.

'Chesterton knew how to make the most of a detective story' Jorge Luis Borges