Writer. Born 32 Sheffield Terrace, Campden Hill, as Gilbert Keith Chesterton. Best known for the Father Brown stories. Married in 1901 and in 1909 he and his wife left London for Beaconsfield. He often wrote about religion and in 1922 converted to Roman Catholicism.
Chesterton had received a very indulgent upbringing, with no insistence on even the basics of cleanliness and self-care. He was tall, over six foot, and until aged about 30 he was slim and fit. This was the time that he started his journalistic career and began spending time in Fleet Street pubs etc. His utter abhorrence of anything approaching discipline or restraint led to his obesity. Wearing a hat and cape he made a distinctive figure as he hung around the taverns of Fleet Street, a latter-day Dr Johnson.
At about the time he became obese he wrote the 1908 novel The Man Who Was Thursday, in which one of the characters, the controlling force of the plot, can be read as a self-portrait: repeated described as large, in height and girth. One of the other characters describes him as: ".. a huge heap of a man, dark and out of shape.... the Thing began to shake ... like a loathsome and living jelly. It reminded me of everything I had ever read about the base bodies that are the origin of life - the deep sea lumps and protoplasm. It seemed like the final form of matter, the most shapeless and the most shameful. I could only tell myself from its shudderings, that it was something at least that such a monster could be miserable....". Difficult to believe that this miserable monster is not Chesterton himself, documenting his own self-loathing.
Following a health crisis in 1914, Chesterton stopped drinking for about 10 years and lost the weight. But he returned to the drink and the weight returned.
Died at his home at Top Meadow, Beaconsfield.
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