Speaking about Chesterton

Episode 11: CHESTERTON AROUND THE WORLD SERIES: "Chesterton and France"

Welcome to Speaking About Chesterton. In this episode of our Series Chesterton around the world, Dr. Dermot Quinn and I will speak about Chesterton and France. We will discuss Chesterton’s writings and thoughts of France and the French people.
France was the first country he visited as a young man in 1892 with his father at the age of 18. After this first trip, he writes that he was “grateful for seeing France as a young man as a traveler and not as a tourist.” 
He visited again in 1908, and in 1935 with his wife Frances and with Dorothy Collins

Episode 10: CHESTERTON AROUND THE WORLD SERIES: "Chesterton and Poland"

Welcome to Speaking About Chesterton. In this episode of our Series Chesterton around the world, Dr. Dermot Quinn and I will speak about Chesterton and Poland.
 
Chesterton visited Poland in 1927.
 
In 1976, almost half-a-century after the visit, Father Ian Boyd at his lecture at the Catholic University in Lublin remarks: “Chesterton’s admiration for Poland scarcely requires and explanation. Like Ireland, Poland possessed all the qualities Chesterton most valued: it was Catholic, it was agrarian, and it was small. In a sense, it was a living proof that the ideal state for which he longed could be an actual reality. An ideal which he believed had almost been realized in mediaeval times had been actually achieved in his own age.

Episode 9: CHESTERTON AROUND THE WORLD SERIES: “Chesterton and Ireland”

Welcome to Episode 2 of our series: Chesterton around the World.
 
In today’s episode we will speak with Professor Dermot Quinn about “Chesterton and Ireland”.
 
Chesterton travelled to Ireland for the first time in 1918, while there he wrote a series of articles for the New Witness that were then published in his 1919 book entitled Irish Impressions. In the book he writes,
 
“I went to Ireland at the request of Irish friends who were working warmly for the Allied cause, and who conceived (I fear in far too flattering a spirit), that I might at least be useful as an Englishman who had always sympathized as warmly with the Irish cause.”
 
He goes on to say:
 
“I need not explain the motives that made me do the little I could do; they were the same that at the moment made millions of better men do masses of better work.”
 
As we can read his reason for visiting Ireland the first time, in the first paragraph of the book he writes about his first impressions,
 
                  When I had for the first time crossed St. George’s Channel, and for the
                  first time stepped out of a Dublin hotel on to St Stephen’s Green,
                  the first of all my impressions was that of a particular statue, or
rather portion of a statue. I left many traditional mysteries already
in my track, but they did not trouble me as did this random glimpse or
vision. I have never understood why the Channel is called St George’s
Channel; it would seem more natural to call it St. Patrick’s Channel
since the great missionary did almost certainly cross that unquiet
sea and look up at those mysterious mountains.
 
We invite you now to listen to our conversation about Chesterton and Ireland, a country he visited in 1918 and in 1932.

Episode 8: CHESTERTON AROUND THE WORLD SERIES: “Chesterton and England”

Welcome to our new series “Chesterton Around the World.”  For the next 5 episodes, Gloria Garafulich-Grabois, director of the G.K. Chesterton Institute and professor Dermot Quinn, editor of The Chesterton Review will speak about Chesterton and various countries—starting with England, the country of his birth. In later episodes we will explore Chesterton and Ireland, Chesterton and Poland, Chesterton and France and Chesterton and Italy.
We begin with “England,” – the country of his birth, the country he loved and that he extensively wrote about including his very well-known, or perhaps better said, popular book “A short history of England.” As he states in the first paragraph of the Introduction of the book as to why he would write he would write this book, he states: “The answer is that I know just enough to know one thing: that a history from the standpoint of a member of the public has not been written.”

Episode 7: "Chesterton & Belloc--a Fastidious Friendship", a dramatic reading by Dr. James McGlone. Readers: Celtic Theatre Company. Commentary: Dr. Dermot Quinn

The dramatic reading tells the story of the fastidious friendship of two remarkable men, G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc. We encounter their youthful and engaging good humor, their personal devotion to their wives, the fighting tone of their journalistic and political conflicts, their hesitant thoughtfulness about the state of their own souls, and the gallant stance both took in the face of overwhelming odds

Episode 6: "The adventure of being born"

"The adventure of being born" --the G.K. Chesterton Institute the celebration of the 150th anniversary of G.K. Chesterton's Birth-- a conversation with Dermot Quinn and Gloria Garafulich-Grabois

Episode 5: Selections from G.K. Chesterton's poems

In this episode we will discuss:
The House of Christmas, Anti-Christ, or the Reunion of Christendom: an Ode and The Secret People
 

Episode 4: Selections from Chesterton’s “What I Saw in America” (1922)

Episode 3: Selections from Chesterton’s “Orthodoxy (1908)

In today’s episode we will be discussing Chesterton’s 1908 book Orthodoxy. The chapters we are going to cover are:
                             Chapter 1:         Introduction - “In Defence of Everything Else”
                             and
Chapter 2:         “The Maniac”
Facilitator: Dr. Dermot Quinn
Introduction: Gloria Garafulich-Grabois
 

Episode 2: Selections from Chesterton’s “Heretics” (1905)

In today’s episode we will be discussing the following chapters of G.K. Chesterton’s book Heretics:
“The Importance of Orthodoxy” (chapter 1)
“Christmas and the Aesthetes” (chapter 6)
“On Sandals and Simplicity” (chapter 10)
“On Certain Modern Writers and the Institution of the Family” (chapter 14)
Facilitator: Dr. Dermot Quinn
Introduction: Gloria Garafulich-Grabois