73 Facts About Hilaire Belloc

Joseph Hilaire Pierre Rene Belloc was a Franco-English writer and historian of the early 20th century.

Hilaire Belloc became a naturalised British subject in 1902 while retaining his French citizenship.

Hilaire Belloc was a noted disputant, with a number of long-running feuds.

Hilaire Belloc's writings encompassed religious poetry and comic verse for children.

Hilaire Belloc's widely sold Cautionary Tales for Children included "Jim, who ran away from his nurse, and was eaten by a lion" and "Matilda, who told lies and was burned to death".

Hilaire Belloc wrote historical biographies and numerous travel works, including The Path to Rome.

Hilaire Belloc was born in La Celle-Saint-Cloud, France to a French father, Louis Hilaire Belloc and an English mother.

Hilaire Belloc's mother Bessie Rayner Parkes was a writer, activist and an advocate for women's equality, a co-founder of the English Woman's Journal and the Langham Place Group.

Hilaire Belloc's grandmother, Elizabeth Rayner Priestley, was born in the United States, a granddaughter of Joseph Priestley.

Hilaire Belloc grew up in England; his boyhood was spent in Slindon, Sussex.

Hilaire was absent touring the French provinces as a correspondent for The Pall Mall Gazette, but when the Hogans stopped back in London on their return from another European trip the following year, Belloc met Elodie for the first time, and was smitten.

Hilaire Belloc left her two daughters, who wished to remain in London, under the care of the Belloc family, and, Bessie asked her own son to squire the Hogan daughters around London.

Hilaire Belloc pursued Elodie with letters, and, after her return to the United States, in 1891, he pursued her in person.

An athletic man who hiked extensively in Britain and Europe, Hilaire Belloc made his way on foot for a significant part of the 2870 miles from Philadelphia to San Francisco.

When Hilaire Belloc finally reached the East Coast at Montclair, New Jersey, he received a letter from Elodie on April 30,1891, definitively rejecting him in favour of a religious vocation; the steamship trip home was tainted with despair.

Hilaire Belloc graduated as a history scholar, securing a first-class honours degree in June of 1895.

Hilaire Belloc left a month later, writing to Belloc that she had failed in her religious vocation.

In March of 1896, having secured financing as an Oxford Extension lecturer in Philadelphia, Germantown, Baltimore and New Orleans, Hilaire Belloc took a steamship to New York, and started making his way to Elodie in California.

Hilaire Belloc expected to receive letters from her on his journey, but received none.

Hilaire Belloc, thinking that after all their suffering, he and his beloved would be denied one another by her death, collapsed.

In 1906, Hilaire Belloc purchased land and a house called King's Land at Shipley in the United Kingdom.

Hilaire Belloc was age 45, and Belloc, at age 43, had more than 40 years of life ahead of him.

Hilaire Belloc wore mourning garb for the rest of his life and kept her room as she had left it.

Hilaire Belloc placed a memorial tablet at the nearby Cambrai Cathedral.

Hilaire Belloc fell ill while on active service with the 5th Battalion, Royal Marines in Scotland.

Hilaire Belloc is buried in West Grinstead at Our Lady of Consolation and St Francis churchyard.

In 1937, Hilaire Belloc was invited to be a visiting professor at Fordham University in New York City by university president Robert Gannon.

In 1941, Hilaire Belloc suffered a stroke and never recovered from its effects.

Hilaire Belloc died on 16 July 1953 at Mount Alvernia Nursing Home in Guildford, Surrey.

Hilaire Belloc was buried at the Shrine Church of Our Lady of Consolation and St Francis at West Grinstead, where he had regularly attended Mass as a parishioner.

Jesuit political philosopher James Schall's Remembering Hilaire Belloc was published by St Augustine Press in September 2013.

At Balliol College, Hilaire Belloc served as president of the Oxford Union.

Hilaire Belloc went into politics after he became a naturalised British subject.

From 1906 to 1910, Hilaire Belloc was a Liberal Party Member of Parliament for Salford South.

The crowd cheered and Hilaire Belloc won the election, despite his Catholic faith.

Hilaire Belloc retained his seat in the first 1910 election but did not stand in December 1910.

Hilaire Belloc first came to public attention shortly after arriving at Balliol College, Oxford as a recent French army veteran.

Hilaire Belloc won that debate from the audience, as the division of the house then showed, and his reputation as a debater was established.

Hilaire Belloc held his own in debates there with F E Smith and John Buchan, the latter a friend.

Hilaire Belloc criticised what he termed Wells's secular bias and his belief in evolution by means of natural selection, a theory that Hilaire Belloc asserted had been completely discredited.

Wells remarked that "Debating Mr Hilaire Belloc is like arguing with a hailstorm".

Hilaire Belloc's review of Outline of History observed that Wells's book was a powerful and well-written volume "up until the appearance of Man, that is, somewhere around page seven".

Not to be outdone, Hilaire Belloc followed with, "Mr Hilaire Belloc Still Objects".

Hilaire Belloc won many races and was on the French sailing team.

Hilaire Belloc sailed this for some years around the coasts of England, with the help of younger men.

Hilaire Belloc wrote over 150 books, the subjects ranging from warfare to poetry to the many current topics of his day.

Hilaire Belloc was closely associated with Chesterton, and Shaw coined the term "Chesterbelloc" for their partnership.

Hilaire Belloc was co-editor with Cecil Chesterton of the literary periodical the Eye-Witness.

In 1902, Hilaire Belloc published The Path to Rome, an account of a walking pilgrimage from Central France across the Alps to Rome.

In 1909, Hilaire Belloc published The Pyrenees, providing many details of that region.

Hilaire Belloc's poetry is often religious, often romantic; throughout The Path to Rome he writes in spontaneous song.

From an early age Hilaire Belloc knew Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, who was responsible for the conversion of his mother to Roman Catholicism.

Hilaire Belloc became a trenchant critic both of capitalism and of many aspects of socialism.

Hilaire Belloc made the historical argument that distributism was not a fresh perspective or program of economics but rather a proposed return to the economics that prevailed in Europe for the thousand years when it was Catholic.

Hilaire Belloc called for the dissolution of Parliament and its replacement with committees of representatives for the various sectors of society, an idea that was popular among fascists, under the name of corporatism.

Hilaire Belloc contributed an article on "Land-Tenure in the Christian Era" to the Catholic Encyclopedia.

Hilaire Belloc held republican views, but became increasingly sympathetic to monarchism as he grew older.

Hilaire Belloc thus felt that monarchy was the most practicable, superior form of government.

Hilaire Belloc objected to his adversary's tacitly anti-Christian stance, epitomized by the fact that Wells had devoted more space in his "history" to the Persian campaign against the Greeks than he had given to the figure of Christ.

Hilaire Belloc alludes to this return to Catholicism in a passage in The Cruise of the Nona.

Hilaire Belloc considered that Islam was permanently intent on destroying the Christian faith, as well as the West, which Christendom had built.

Hilaire Belloc's writings were at times supportive of anti-Semitism and other times condemnatory of it.

Hilaire Belloc took a leading role in denouncing the Marconi scandal of 1912.

Hilaire Belloc emphasized that key players in both the government and the Marconi corporation had been Jewish.

Anthony Powell mentions in his review of that biography that in his view Hilaire Belloc was thoroughly anti-Semitic, at all but a personal level.

Norman Rose's book The Cliveden Set asserts that Hilaire Belloc 'was moved by a deep vein of hysterical anti-semitism'.

In February 1924, Hilaire Belloc wrote to an American Jewish friend regarding an anti-Semitic book by Webster.

Hilaire Belloc condemned Nazi anti-Semitism in The Catholic and the War.

Hilaire Belloc grew up in Slindon and spent most of his life in West Sussex.

Hilaire Belloc always wrote of Sussex as if it were the crown of England and the western Sussex Downs the jewel in that crown.

Hilaire Belloc loved Sussex as the place where he was brought up, considering it his earthly "spiritual home".

Hilaire Belloc wrote several works about Sussex including Ha'nacker Mill, The South Country, the travel guide Sussex and The County of Sussex.

Hilaire Belloc was a lover of Sussex songs and wrote lyrics for some songs which have since been put to music.