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The Club of Queer Trades

3.91 of 5 stars 3.91 · rating details · 728 ratings · 56 reviews

The six "Club" tales contained in this volume are an excellect near-parody of detective stories the late 19th and early 20th century (and in particular of the Sherlock Holmes stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle). Together, they form a pleasant introduction to G. K. Chesterton's whimsical, offbeat style of detective fiction.

Hardcover, 136 pages

Published March 12th 2007 by WLC (first published 1905)

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Nov 29, 2010 Sam Kabo Ashwell rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Episodic. To qualify for the titular club, you must have invented your profession -- the emphasis is on weird niches rather than world-shaking innovation. The everymannish narrator plays Watson to Basil Hart, a retired judge, in various mysteries which always lead to the discovery of a new member for the club.

Basil Grant is an ex-judge, involunarily retired because he is too commonsensical. He is obviously a sort of commentary on Sherlock Holmes: where Holmes is always right because of his comma...more Episodic. To qualify for the titular club, you must have invented your profession -- the emphasis is on weird niches rather than world-shaking innovation. The everymannish narrator plays Watson to Basil Hart, a retired judge, in various mysteries which always lead to the discovery of a new member for the club.

Basil Grant is an ex-judge, involunarily retired because he is too commonsensical. He is obviously a sort of commentary on Sherlock Holmes: where Holmes is always right because of his command of rational empiricism, Basil is always right because he is a fine judge of character and solidly pragmatic, although he is Holmesian in that he always rejects the most obvious explanation. He has a Holmes-like foil in his younger brother Rupert, who is frequently dashing off to solve crimes which turn out not to be crimes and apprehend criminals who Basil has known all along are good but eccentric.

About half of the Queer Trades boil down to being hired out to sneak actors and theatrics into mundane life, either to deceive the client's social circle (one company detains unwanted guests; a man poses as a buffoon, allowing his client to deliver cutting wit from a script) or to entertain (the Adventure and Romance Company draws its clients into picturesque mysteries); the general pattern is that what appears like melodrama and adventure turns out to be prosaic.

Basil, it eventually transpires, is the President of the Club of Queer Trades; his trade is as a judge in an honour-system, situation-ethics system for offences that are unethical or nasty but not actually criminal: "for selfishness, or for an impossible vanity, or for scandalmongering, or for stinginess to guests or dependents." Combined with his guiding principle of detection -- that there are Good People and Wicked People, and the difference can be discerned at a glance by an experienced eye -- this doesn't come across as wonderful an idea as Chesterton appears to think it is. The fact that it's a light work and doesn't wrangle overmuch with the idea doesn't help.

Chesterton has a pleasant enough prose style, but the stories don't really satisfy as stories; some scenes are extended to the point of padding, various strings are left untied, and the prosaic explanations for each mystery -- usually relying heavily on coincidence -- are often not any more credible than the Conan Doyle-ish outcome that you're led to expect.

The most interesting thing about this is its awareness the basic premises of its genre are not apolitical.(less)

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Dec 08, 2008 Brendan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2008, fiction, audio, mystery

Chesterton's book is a series of mystery stories involving a narrator and his friend, the eccentric ex-judge Basil Grant. Each story is about someone who belongs to the Club of Queer Trades--someone who makes his living in an unique way.

I haven't read any Chesterton before, but was delighted by the breadth and depth of the mysteries. They had a variety of means and ends, and often didn't involve murder or other sordid crimes. At the same time, the detective Basil Grant becomes a sort of anti-Sh...more Chesterton's book is a series of mystery stories involving a narrator and his friend, the eccentric ex-judge Basil Grant. Each story is about someone who belongs to the Club of Queer Trades--someone who makes his living in an unique way.

I haven't read any Chesterton before, but was delighted by the breadth and depth of the mysteries. They had a variety of means and ends, and often didn't involve murder or other sordid crimes. At the same time, the detective Basil Grant becomes a sort of anti-Sherlock, relying more on what he knows about people through his long study of them, rather than through detailed facts and clues. There's an interesting passage about the unreliability of facts:

"Facts," murmured Basil, like one mentioning some strange, far-off animals, "how facts obscure the truth. I may be silly—in fact, I'm off my head—but I never could believe in that man—what's his name, in those capital stories?—Sherlock Holmes. Every detail points to something, certainly; but generally to the wrong thing. Facts point in all directions, it seems to me, like the thousands of twigs on a tree. It's only the life of the tree that has unity and goes up—only the green blood that springs, like a fountain, at the stars."
("Death to Major Brown")

This anti-rational approach depends on the spiritual approach to the universe. Basil functions like the physiologies (common books from the early 1800s that described residents of the city using broad caricatures), abstracting ideas about the character of people he meets not from any specific facts but rather from the general impression of them as people.

This book also features a club that seems to be the inspiration for the movie The Game -- the Adventure and Romance Agency:

"Major," said he, "did you ever, as you walked along the empty street upon some idle afternoon, feel the utter hunger for something to happen—something, in the splendid words of Walt Whitman: 'Something pernicious and dread; something far removed from a puny and pious life; something unproved; something in a trance; something loosed from its anchorage, and driving free.' Did you ever feel that?"

"Certainly not," said the Major shortly.

"Then I must explain with more elaboration," said Mr Northover, with a sigh. "The Adventure and Romance Agency has been started to meet a great modern desire. On every side, in conversation and in literature, we hear of the desire for a larger theatre of events for something to waylay us and lead us splendidly astray. Now the man who feels this desire for a varied life pays a yearly or a quarterly sum to the Adventure and Romance Agency; in return, the Adventure and Romance Agency undertakes to surround him with startling and weird events. As a man is leaving his front door, an excited sweep approaches him and assures him of a plot against his life; he gets into a cab, and is driven to an opium den; he receives a mysterious telegram or a dramatic visit, and is immediately in a vortex of incidents. A very picturesque and moving story is first written by one of the staff of distinguished novelists who are at present hard at work in the adjoining room...."

"How on earth does the thing work?" asked Rupert Grant, with bright and fascinated eyes.

"We believe that we are doing a noble work," said Northover warmly. "It has continually struck us that there is no element in modern life that is more lamentable than the fact that the modern man has to seek all artistic existence in a sedentary state. If he wishes to float into fairyland, he reads a book; if he wishes to dash into the thick of battle, he reads a book; if he wishes to soar into heaven, he reads a book; if he wishes to slide down the banisters, he reads a book. We give him these visions, but we give him exercise at the same time, the necessity of leaping from wall to wall, of fighting strange gentlemen, of running down long streets from pursuers—all healthy and pleasant exercises. We give him a glimpse of that great morning world of Robin Hood or the Knights Errant, when one great game was played under the splendid sky. We give him back his childhood, that godlike time when we can act stories, be our own heroes, and at the same instant dance and dream."
("Death to Major Brown")

One might also suggest that the appeal of ARGs depends on this same dissatisfaction with pre-packaged media entertainment. What doesn't figure here, though, is the rise of mix culture. The ability to remix and create your own media undoes some of the malaise of the modern man.(less)

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May 25, 2013 Rui rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Even though I’ve been curious about G.K. Chesterton for quite some time, ever since I’ve read that some of my favourite writers were influenced by his style, I’ve never read anything by him. To tell the truth I was slightly worried I would not enjoy his writing because I’ve also read that he had some rather strong conservative leanings. But a few days ago I found this small book at a very affordable price and decided it was about time I picked it up.
I am pleased I did. Maybe it’s this particular...more Even though I’ve been curious about G.K. Chesterton for quite some time, ever since I’ve read that some of my favourite writers were influenced by his style, I’ve never read anything by him. To tell the truth I was slightly worried I would not enjoy his writing because I’ve also read that he had some rather strong conservative leanings. But a few days ago I found this small book at a very affordable price and decided it was about time I picked it up.
I am pleased I did. Maybe it’s this particular book, or maybe I had judged the man too harshly without ever really knowing what he wrote, but the thing is that within this pages I found not so much the overly-conservative kind of social criticism I was fearing, but a smarter, kinder, type of conservatism I can live well with. Most of the stuff pointed out was simple common sense and, surprisingly, I found myself agreeing with Basil Grant, the main character, more often than not.

Chesterton seems to be very apt at creating quirky and strange stories, populated by quirky and strange characters that, nevertheless, are easy to picture walking down a street in real life and engaging in that very sort of adventures. He is strange and funny but never “nonsensical” and it is a rather hard balance he achieves in these six short-stories.

Basil Grant is both a kind of Sherlock Holmes, in that he is amazingly competent and seemingly infallible, but also his exact opposite, using a mix of common sense, knowledge of human nature and instinct to solve his cases instead of formal logic. But, and this is the really clever bit, truth be told, all the cases can be solved by the readers if they use the kind of “grantian logic” instead of its “holmesian” counterpart. Chesterton does play fair, the rules of “the game” are well established early on, all clues are on page, even if they often come from unexpected sources and the endings actually made a lot of sense most of the time.
On the other hand Rupert Grant, Basil’s younger brother, is a well done parody of the style of detectives that followed Holmes school of investigation. There is, for example, a delightful scene where he is trying to find out “The Truth” about a milkman using deductive reasoning and the results are...well... memorably hilarious…

My only complaint might be the very ending of the book… even if I loved Basil’s speech about the profession of Judge there (full of shrewd observations, if you ask me) what we find out about him might just undermine the understanding we thought we had about his prowess as an investigator. It doesn’t necessarily do that, but it can. That disappointed me a bit because I came to admire the way he acted throughout the book and the way he reached his conclusions.

But, all in all, The Club of Queer Trades was quite a humorous light read filled with some very quotable lines, and a very nice and different take on the mystery genre.

(By the way... 3 stars because I read a translation and it was quite a bit of rubbish - para a malta tuga: Europa-America, colecção vampiro...yeah... - but I guess that in this particular case I got exactly what I paid for, so I can't complain much.)(less)

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Jan 25, 2012 Cliff rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: short-stories

To qualify for membership of the Club of Queer Trades a person must have invented an entirely new trade by which he earns his (as it happens, members are exclusively male) living, and the trade must be a commercial source of income, the support of its inventor. (A weakness of the stories is that not all of the 'Trades' they describe actually fulfil these criteria).

The six short stories are set in London in the first decade of the twentieth century. Basil Grant, like Chesterton's detective Father...more

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Feb 11, 2013 Nathaniel rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book is comprised of several one chapter fictions written in the vein of Sherlock Holmes, but with a style and moral twist that only Chesterton can impart. A short, yet fun read.

"What I complain of is a vague popular philosophy which supposes itself to be scientific when it is really nothing but a sort of new religion and an uncommonly nasty one. When people talk about the fall of man they knew they were talking about a mystery, a thing they didn't understand. Now that they talk about the...more

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Nov 15, 2010 Maurizio Codogno rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: parodie, racconti, giallo, finished

Chesterton, almeno in Italia, è noto perché Renato Rascel interpretò i racconti di padre Brown, pretino cattolico (Chesterton si convertì dall'anglicanesimo e scrisse anche libri apologetici) che fa l'investigatore piuttosto a modo suo. Ma padre Brown non è l'unico investigatore creato dalla penna di Chesterton. In questo breve libro sono raccolti sei racconti investigativi. con protagonista Basil Grant, un ex giudice cacciato per pazzia conclamata. Basil è un omone, generalmente vestito di bian...more

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Nov 07, 2011 Mitch rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-fiction, christianity

This title was really just fine in its day. Now, not so much.

The book is a series of short mystery stories linked by a unique British club. As in all short story collections, some are better than others.

I enjoyed G.K.'s writing style (a bit archaic now, but I love the interesting way his characters speak to one another) and his obvious love affair with the eccentric.

Then again, he would often introduce oddities and then obviously hold off explaining them for far too long- not wanting to resolve...more

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Nov 13, 2012 Miike rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I think Chesterton is the most overlooked and underrated author in the English language. This is a beautiful edition of one of my favourite books. The quality of writing is so good that it may take some time to read other more modern books. After reading this you may need to read Dickens to come down.
This is a crime thriller and the use of the word queer relates not to its current use but means unique or singular. The club is made up from those who have an occupation shared by none. It's a well...more

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Dec 31, 2010 Adrienne rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: book-count-2010, mystery, own-it

G.K. Chesterton is an excellent author; it's really too bad that more people don't know about him. His works do take a little mental effort to read, but the rewards are always an interesting and well-told story.

The Club of Queer Trades is a set of short stories that are related to each other very slightly, by way of the titular Club. It's a very self-explanatory name; to get in to the group, you need to have invented a completely different occupation and to be able to make your living by your ne...more

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Jan 28, 2010 Julie Davis rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

#7 - 2010

At the beginning of the 20th century, in detective fiction there was Sherlock Holmes and that was all. There were other fictional detectives, to be sure, but they were only bad imitations of Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous consulting detective. The sleuths offered by other writers would try to outdo Holmes in eccentricity and in solving crimes that were evermore contrived and convoluted.

But in 1905 a book of mysteries came along that finally managed to turn the Sherlock Holmes idea on its h...more

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Jun 01, 2008 Amanda rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Another Librivox recording.

The Librivox volunteer was fabulous! The same volunteer did all chapters and was just one of the best I've listened to.

Here's the official summary:

A collection of six wonderfully quirky detective stories, featuring the ‘mystic’ former judge Basil Grant. Each story reveals a practitioner of an entirely new profession, and member of the Club of Queer Trades. (Summary by David Barnes)

The book starts off with the tremendous adventures of Major Brown that leads us to the fi...more

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Apr 06, 2008 Briege rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"It is and eccentric and Bohemian Club, of which the absolute condition of membership lies in this, that the candidate must have invented the method by which he earns his living. It must be an entirely new trade. The exact definition of this requirement is given in two principal rules. First, it must not be a mere application of variation of an existing trade. Thus for instance, the Club would not admit an insurance agent simply because instead of insuring men's furniture against being burnt in...more

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Mar 16, 2011 Jesse Broussard rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: chesterton, excellent, fiction

How even to review this? And what exactly is the point? For that matter, what was the point of it being written? It certainly wasn't a necessary book. I don't believe the great Catholic ever sat down and said, "How to save England and the rest of the world? Ah, this will do the trick." And if I'm mistaken, if he did utter such a phrase, it wasn't about this book. Perhaps he simply needed to stretch the legs of his mind--indeed, I shall take that as the excuse (it will serve as well as any other)...more How even to review this? And what exactly is the point? For that matter, what was the point of it being written? It certainly wasn't a necessary book. I don't believe the great Catholic ever sat down and said, "How to save England and the rest of the world? Ah, this will do the trick." And if I'm mistaken, if he did utter such a phrase, it wasn't about this book. Perhaps he simply needed to stretch the legs of his mind--indeed, I shall take that as the excuse (it will serve as well as any other), and now, allow me to invite you to accompany him in his hike, for the air has the smell of salt, yet there are mountains, valleys, dark close woods and expansive vistas unfolding as vast as the very designs of God.

How does one take words--I dare say he employed none that I am not on intimate terms with--and craft such glories as this book with them? I love words (and use them interminably), but they do not perform for me the way they do for him. I would give all I own to be able to see the world with the eyes of Chesterton—wait: no, this isn't true. I would not. Were I to receive his vision it would terrify me, and I would probably give all I own to be restored to my blind state. Indeed, what would a man give to restore the roof of the sky if it were at a moment rent away?

It is no wonder that we build house-boxes to enclose our souls so that the four corners of the world do not tear them apart. We build fences and post signs and do all we can to make the world a safe, a soft place, when there is nothing quite so suddenly savage or terrible as a dandelion or a daffodil, and a dragon is no more awesome (though grown somewhat less common) than a dragonfly. Yet we seek to finally and fully conquer nature through knowledge: we seek to tame the world with science.

But Chesterton did not. He wanted the world to be wild, and he rebelled at the tired, grey apathy of sin that disguises itself in the guise of respectability and wisdom. So, he carried a brace of loaded pistols, a dagger, a sword cane and a cape, and he laughed as loudly and often as a child. For the world was not a safe place, and he was not a safe man.

Indeed, Chesterton was a man, who, with N. D. Wilson, would not be afraid that he would fall off a cliff, but that he would jump.
(less)

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Feb 06, 2013 Gwan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I have recently been reading Sherlock Holmes for the first time, and presumably came across a reference to this somewhere, downloaded it and then forgot, because it's essentially a parody/pastiche of the Sherlock Holmes model. It's amusing enough to dip in and out of - it's more a collection of short stories with a loose frame story about the "Club of Queer Trades" (a club for people who make their living in new and unique ways) - but not something that had a big impact for me.

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Feb 12, 2010 Charlotte rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery-adventure

Set in late Victorian London, this is an enjoyable collection of six short stories centred around the narrator, Cherub Swinburne and his friends, the brothers, Rupert and Basil Grant. Each story involves a strange occurrence, some of which border on the criminal (or initially seem to), and it is the unravelling of the underlying cause of these occurrences which leads to each of the queer trades: trades which have never been heard of before. Effectively these are detective stories, without any cr...more

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Oct 13, 2011 arg/machine rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A set of mystery tales involving people in odd – and this means really odd – professions. Whimsical and fun, this book is now in the public domain, with a free electronic copy available here.

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May 06, 2009 Kate added it · review of another edition

Shelves: librivox

Read by David Barnes, who does quite a good job. Handles the dialogue well; handles the acting required of an audiobook narrator without going overboard or getting melodramatic. He has a pleasant English accent and occasionally drops into a different (English) accent here and there when a character calls for it without getting too stagey about it. Nicely done.

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Apr 30, 2013 Adam rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Here we have a a curious collection of short stories all built around the brothers Basil and Rupert Grant as they tromped around London looking for oddly infuriating mysteries to solve. Fans of Chesterton's engaging fiction will enjoy the ample whimsy and clever plot twist and turns.

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Jun 21, 2009 Jenna Sowash rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"It is true that all sensible women think all studious men mad. It is true, for the matter of that, all women of any kind think all men of any kind mad. But they don't put it in telegrams, any more than they wire to you that grass is green or God all-merciful. These things are truisms, and often private ones at that.

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Mar 25, 2013 Karen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: funny-light-hearted-mystery

I was really thinking 1/2 of the stories in this book as being so ridiculous......And then came the end. it made all the difference. the end was poetic and astounding. The book leaped from a 2 over the 3 and ended on 4. All because of the ending.

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Dec 27, 2012 Rachel rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A collection of short stories, all linked to a mysterious club whose members have all invented an entirely new trade. Incredibly inventive and well executed - delivers what it promises! I absolutely love Chesterton's writing style, and this - although not my absolute favourite of his books - did not disappoint!

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Mar 06, 2011 Cody rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

obviously got this book because of the funny title, wasn't super into it. Man Who Was Thursday was a lot cooler and i don't think i'm going to read more chesterton to find out if anything is better than that

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Oct 26, 2009 Lauren rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I throughly enjoied the dry humor, irony and twists. It was surprizing and a little predictable but still very good. The imagination the G.K. Chesterton has amazes me. I would recommend this book to everyone.

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Feb 22, 2013 Trudy rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery

While I love to read Chesterton, this was not one of my favorite books. For some reason, I just did not get into it and it took my about a month to finish it.

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Feb 02, 2012 Lisa rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"Truth must of necessity be stranger than fiction," said Basil placidly. "For fiction is the creation of the human mind, and therefore congenial to it."

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Sep 26, 2012 Magda rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literature, favorites

Καλά, ακόμα κι αν ήταν μόνο για την μετάφραση του πεντζίκη και πάλι θα ήταν εξαιρετικό. Αλλά, φυσικά, είναι και ο τσέστερον! Τι άλλο χρειάζεται;

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Oct 13, 2012 Gus rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

O Chesterton έχει όχι μόνο ιδιαίτερη γραφή, αλλά και πλοκή εν έτει 1905, παντρεύοντας το μυστήριο και το αλλόκοτο με ωραίο χιούμορ!

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Sep 13, 2012 Robert rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I very much enjoy G.K. Chesterton, and this was no exception. Often a parody of Sherlock Holmes, but very interesting and enjoyable.

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Feb 08, 2011 D'face rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A collection of short stories revolving around a retired and eccentric judge Basil Grant who solves mysteries in a way similar to Sherlock Holmes. There are some clever ideas included here, a business built around creating life threatening adventures for its bored and affluent clients, a famous life of the party fellow is exposed as a fraud, a witness to a crime gives a true address which cannot be found by the police despite the abode being provided by a reputable house agent, a language create...more

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Jul 21, 2012 Elaine Farrington Johnson rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

One of the best non-violent mysteries I think I've read. Good fun! Another author I'm adding to my to-read list.

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About G.K. Chesterton

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) cannot be summed up in one sentence. Nor in one paragraph. In fact, in spite of the fine biographies that have been written of him (and his Autobiography), he has never been captured between the covers of one book. But rather than waiting to separate the goats from the sheep, let’s just come right out and say it: G.K. Chesterton was the best writer of the twent...more Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) cannot be summed up in one sentence. Nor in one paragraph. In fact, in spite of the fine biographies that have been written of him (and his Autobiography), he has never been captured between the covers of one book. But rather than waiting to separate the goats from the sheep, let’s just come right out and say it: G.K. Chesterton was the best writer of the twentieth century. He said something about everything and he said it better than anybody else. But he was no mere wordsmith. He was very good at expressing himself, but more importantly, he had something very good to express. The reason he was the greatest writer of the twentieth century was because he was also the greatest thinker of the twentieth century.

Born in London, Chesterton was educated at St. Paul’s, but never went to college. He went to art school. In 1900, he was asked to contribute a few magazine articles on art criticism, and went on to become one of the most prolific writers of all time. He wrote a hundred books, contributions to 200 more, hundreds of poems, including the epic Ballad of the White Horse, five plays, five novels, and some two hundred short stories, including a popular series featuring the priest-detective, Father Brown. In spite of his literary accomplishments, he considered himself primarily a journalist. He wrote over 4000 newspaper essays, including 30 years worth of weekly columns for the Illustrated London News, and 13 years of weekly columns for the Daily News. He also edited his own newspaper, G.K.’s Weekly. (To put it into perspective, four thousand essays is the equivalent of writing an essay a day, every day, for 11 years. If you’re not impressed, try it some time. But they have to be good essays, all of them, as funny as they are serious, and as readable and rewarding a century after you've written them.)

Chesterton was equally at ease with literary and social criticism, history, politics, economics, philosophy, and theology. His style is unmistakable, always marked by humility, consistency, paradox, wit, and wonder. His writing remains as timely and as timeless today as when it first appeared, even though much of it was published in throw away paper.

This man who composed such profound and perfect lines as "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried," stood 6’4" and weighed about 300 pounds, usually had a cigar in his mouth, and walked around wearing a cape and a crumpled hat, tiny glasses pinched to the end of his nose, swordstick in hand, laughter blowing through his moustache. And usually had no idea where or when his next appointment was. He did much of his writing in train stations, since he usually missed the train he was supposed to catch. In one famous anecdote, he wired his wife, saying, "Am at Market Harborough. Where ought I to be?" His faithful wife, Frances, attended to all the details of his life, since he continually proved he had no way of doing it himself. She was later assisted by a secretary, Dorothy Collins, who became the couple’s surrogate daughter, and went on to become the writer’s literary executrix, continuing to make his work available after his death.

This absent-minded, overgrown elf of a man, who laughed at his own jokes and amused children at birthday parties by catching buns in his mouth, was the man who wrote a book called The Everlasting Man, which led a young atheist named C.S. Lewis to become a Christian. This was the man who wrote a novel called The Napoleon of Notting Hill, which inspired Michael Collins to lead a movement for Irish Independence. This was the man who wrote an essay in the Illustrated London News that inspired Mahatma Gandhi to lead a movement to end British colonial rule in India. This was a man who, when commissioned to write a book on St. Thomas Aquinas (aptly titled Saint Thomas Aquinas), had his secretary check out a stack of books on St. (less)

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Quotes from The Club of Queer Trades

“Suppose, my dear Chadd, suppose it is we who are the idiots because we are not afraid of devils in the dark?” — 21 people liked it

“There are a great many good people, and a great many sane people here this afternoon. Unfortunately, by a kind of coincidence, all the good people are mad, and all the sane people are wicked.” — 20 people liked it

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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3332040-the-club-of-queer-trades?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347328161l/3332040.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3332040-the-club-of-queer-trades?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]The Club of Queer Trades by G.K. Chesterton[/url]

The Club of Queer Trades

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