Ideology of Obsession

"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 the powerful historical, social and intellectual background to Chesterton's life and career. He places Chesterton in the wider context of British fascism to explore the question of why fascist ideology proved so compelling among leading figures of the British establishment - attracting not just the weak and marginalized and social misfits, but those who occupied self-assured and prominent roles in British society. Through the life of one leading fascist, Baker looks at the violent racist, anti-semitic and conspiratorial expression of British fascism and suggests that a definition of fascist ideology must be broadened to take account of its emergence in a liberal democratic society."--BOOK JACKET.