Background
Belloc was born in 1870 in La Celle-Saint-Cloud, France.
(Hilaire Belloc examines the five most destructive heretic...)
Hilaire Belloc examines the five most destructive heretical movements to have affected Christian Civilization: Arianism, Mohammedanism (Islam), Albigensianism (Cathar), The Reformation (Protestant), and The Modern Phase. Belloc describes how these movements began, how they spread, and how they continued to influence the world up until the time of his writing (1936). The Chapter on Islam is especially relevant in light of current events; in it Belloc accurately predicts the renewal of Jihadist aggression towards Western Civilization.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0991560671/?tag=2022091-20
(The Servile State is a book written by Hilaire Belloc in ...)
The Servile State is a book written by Hilaire Belloc in 1912 about economics. Although it mentions Distributism, for which he and his friend G. K. Chesterton are famous, it avoids explicit advocation for that economic system. This book lays out, in very broad outline, Belloc's version of European economic history: starting with ancient states, where slavery was critical to the economy, through the medieval economies based on serf and peasant labor, to capitalism. Belloc argues that the development of capitalism was not a natural consequence of the Industrial Revolution, but a consequence of the earlier dissolution of the monasteries in England, which then shaped the course of English industrialization.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1440476438/?tag=2022091-20
Belloc was born in 1870 in La Celle-Saint-Cloud, France.
He was first educated at the Oratory School, Birmingham. He attended and graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, where he had won a scholarship in history.
His first published work, Verses and Sonnets, came out in 1895, the same year in which he graduated from Oxford.
This was followed by The Bad Child's Book of Beasts (1896), a collection of nonsense rhymes.
Belloc then wrote biographies of Danton (1899) and Robespierre (1901).
The work he is most likely to be remembered for is The Path to Rome (1902), in which he describes a walk from his old garrison town of Toul, France, to the Eternal City.
Belloc was equally concerned with economics and worked in alliance with his friend G. K. Chesterton in preaching the need for more equal distribution of property.
His four-volume History of England to the year 1612 (1925, 1928, 1931) was written for this purpose, along with biographies of Charles I (1933), Cromwell (1934), Charles II: The Last Rally (1939), and Elizabeth: Creature of Circumstance (1942).
The clash with H. G. Wells is one of Belloc's most notable public controversies.
His biographies also include such figures in French history as Marie Antoinette (1910), Richelieu (1929), and Napoleon (1932).
Belloc's verse, both serious and comic, won him an enduring audience even among those who most violently disagreed with his ideas.
In 1937, Belloc was invited to be a visiting professor at Fordham University by university president Robert Gannon. Belloc delivered a series of lectures at Fordham which he completed in May of that year. While pleased to accept the invitation, the experience left him physically exhausted and he considered stopping the lectures early.
(Hilaire Belloc examines the five most destructive heretic...)
(The Servile State is a book written by Hilaire Belloc in ...)
As a young man, Belloc lost his faith. Then came a spiritual event, which he never discussed publicly, that returned him to Catholicism for the remainder of his life. Belloc's Catholicism was uncompromising. He believed that the Catholic Church provided hearth and home for the human spirit.
From 1906 to 1910 he was a Liberal Party Member of Parliament for Salford South.
Belloc cited the many beliefs and theological principles Islam shares with Catholicism. For Belloc, the common ground includes the unity and the omnipotence, personal nature, all-goodness, timelessness and providence of God
He was powerfully built, with great stamina.
He would sail when he could afford to do so and became a well-known yachtsman. He won many races and was on the French sailing team.
He loved Sussex to the point of idolatry as the place where he was brought up and as his spiritual home. Belloc wrote several works about Sussex including Ha'nacker Mill, The South Country.
His wife was Elodie Hogan, an American whom he first met in 1890, the couple married in 1896.