Everything about Chesterton was prodigious, from his celebrated waistline to his sympathies and his output. Poetry, journalism, fiction, autobiography, history, criticism, political analysis, biography, polemic and even theology all poured from his pen. His teasingly paradoxical style reflects a mind which was never at rest and a heart as generous as his figure. This selection includes many of the well-known poems and stories – not least a substantial number of the Father Brown mysteries – and the essays about Dickens, unsurpassed to this day; but it also introduces readers to lesser-known writing, including the classic commentary on Aquinas, Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man. Chesterton’s theme throughout is that the world is a perennially astonishing and delightful place if we open our minds to it.c