Ideology of obsession

by David Baker

"Arthur Kenneth Chesterton, cousin of G. K. Chesterton, was a leading member of Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists who later became the first leader of the National Front. Chesterton's life and career spanned the inter- and post-war period. He grew up in South Africa, fought in the First World War and by the age of 21 had begun to experience a powerful sense of disillusionment with the peace, missing the classless comradeship and shared sense of purpose of the trenches and finding his own 'colonial outsider' mentality with its idealized vision of England increasingly at odds with postwar British society. As a literary critic and the editor of a provincial newspaper in the 1920s, Chesterton's sense of cultural despair deepened and reading classic works of English literature became a source of escape and a further opportunity to lose himself in fantasies of an older, better England. By 1933, Chesterton had discovered fascism."--BOOK JACKET. "David Baker's new biography explores th