[[quoteright:210:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/GKC.JPG]]
[[caption-width-right:210:[-"[[Literature/FatherBrown His head was always most valuable when he had lost it. In such moments he put two and two together and made four million]]."-] ]]

->''"He is so cheerful, one might almost believe he had found God."''
-->-- '''Creator/FranzKafka''', ''Conversations with Kafka'' by Gustav Janouch

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (29 May 1874 – 14 June 1936) was an English author and Catholic apologist in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Though best known for his ''Literature/FatherBrown'' mysteries, he wrote prodigiously in a number of genres, both poetry and prose, fiction and non-fiction (the American Chesterton Society reckons that if you wanted to write as many essays as he did you'd have to write one every day for around eleven years).

Chesterton's writing is characterized by a vivid style, with much use of word-play and paradox, and by an often polemical though nearly always hugely good-natured tone. (Typically, he would mock his own [[BigFun large girth]] and heavy drinking.) Common themes in "GKC's" writing include the romance of everyday life, the superiority of traditional to modern ideals, and the dignity of the common man and ordinary pleasures such as smoking and drinking, especially as contrasted with the puritanical ''élites'' of either capitalist conservatives or socialist progressives (whose opposition to each other he considered largely a sham). His swashbuckling attitude toward life was exemplified as well in his personal appearance by the brigandly [[AwesomeAnachronisticApparel broad hat, cape, and sword-stick]] devised for him by his adored wife, Frances.

Unfortunately, Chesterton's writings also reveal him as [[http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2014/11/19/g-k-chesterton-and-the-machinery-of-bigotry/ something of an anti-Semite]], although to what extent and in what contexts is hotly debated. As with [[ValuesDissonance many European intellectuals of his day]], his distrust of the Jewish minority and their supposedly disproportionate influence on the continent--in particular, his repeated suggestion that they dress in distinctive 'Arab' clothing in order to stand out more clearly as 'foreigners'--reads as a lot less excusable post-[[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII Final Solution]]. On the other hand, he never believed in racial theory (to him religion, not race, was the primary defining factor), was vigorously denouncing the immorality of [[TheSocialDarwinist eugenics]] as far back as 1922-- [[FairForItsDay well ahead of the curve]]-- with his book ''[[https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Eugenics_and_other_Evils Eugenics and Other Evils]]'' among others, and he deeply disliked the race-baiting demagoguery of UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler.[[note]]Chesterton died shortly after the Nazis took power in Germany.[[/note]] He also had sympathies with the Zionist movement, arguing that the so-called "Jewish problem" would be solved if the Jewish people had [[UsefulNotes/{{Israel}} their own nation]]. And he actually believed Jews as a group to be superior to Christians in many regards, recognizing that it was their oppression by the latter that drove them to commercial activities he deemed dishonorable. In short, it's not totally clear-cut.

Chesterton had a great influence on many writers, especially in the early twentieth century. He was for many years president of The Detection Club, an organization for writers of MysteryFiction (the oath of which, devised by GKC, demanded that members write only [[FairPlayWhodunnit Fair Play Whodunnits]]); such writers as Creator/AgathaChristie, Fr. Creator/RonaldKnox (Fr. Knox credited Chesterton, who was a High-Church Anglican at the time, for being an influence that led to his conversion. Amusingly, when Chesterton converted, ''he'' credited Fr. Knox for being an influence!), and Creator/DorothyLSayers were co-members. Chesterton's fellow Catholics Creator/HilaireBelloc ([[{{HeterosexualLifePartners}} Chesterton and Belloc]] were collectively nicknamed the [[{{PortmanteauCoupleName}} Chesterbelloc]] by Chesterton's "friendly enemy" Creator/GeorgeBernardShaw) and Creator/JRRTolkien were admirers, and GKC's apologetic writings (especially ''Orthodoxy'' and ''The Everlasting Man'') helped inspire Creator/CSLewis to convert to Christianity.

Chesterton also wrote an influential biography of Creator/CharlesDickens, which is credited with rekindling popular and literary interest in that author at a time when his books had largely fallen out of fashion.

Chesterton has received many homages and pastiches in fiction. Golden Age mystery author Creator/JohnDicksonCarr was such a strong admirer that he modeled his most famous character, Dr. Gideon Fell, on Chesterton's appearance. More recently, Creator/NeilGaiman modeled a character in ''ComicBook/TheSandman1989'' after him, got his inspiration for [[Literature/{{Neverwhere}} London Below]] from ''Literature/TheNapoleonOfNottingHill'' (as he relates [[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatlife/6915542/Neil-Gaiman-introduces-Neverwhere.html here]]), and Gaiman and Creator/TerryPratchett dedicated ''Literature/GoodOmens'' "To G.K. Chesterton: A Man Who Knew What Was Going On." He is also a star in the steampunk Christian series ''Literature/YoungChestertonChronicles''.

!!Works by G. K. Chesterton with their own trope pages include:
[[index]]
* ''Literature/TheBalladOfTheWhiteHorse''
* ''Literature/TheClubOfQueerTrades''
* ''Literature/FatherBrown'' stories
* ''Literature/FourFaultlessFelons''
* ''Literature/TheManWhoKnewTooMuch''
* ''Literature/TheManWhoWasThursday''
* ''Literature/TheNapoleonOfNottingHill''
* ''Literature/TheParadoxesOfMrPond''
* ''Literature/ThePoetAndTheLunatics''
* ''Literature/TalesOfTheLongBow''
* ''Literature/TheTreesOfPride''
[[/index]]

----
!!Other works by G. K. Chesterton provide examples of:
* AboveGoodAndEvil: The claim of the Communist in "The Unmentionable Man" (in ''The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond.'')
* ActivistFundamentalistAntics / ThinkOfTheChildren: An excerpt from ''"How I Found the Superman"'', Daily News 1909
-->''The name of Lady Hypatia Smythe-Brown (now Lady Hypatia Hagg) will never be forgotten in the East End, where she did such splendid social work. Her constant cry of'' '''"Save the children!"''' ''referred to the cruel neglect of children's eyesight involved in allowing them to play with crudely painted toys. She quoted unanswerable statistics to prove that children allowed to look at violet and vermillion often suffered from failing eyesight in their extreme old age; and it was owing to her ceaseless crusade that the pestilence of the Monkey-on-the-Stick was almost swept from Hoxton.''
-->''The devoted worker would tramp the streets untiringly, taking away the toys from all the poor children, who were often moved to tears by her kindness. Her good work was interrupted, partly by a new interest in the creed of Zoroaster, and partly by a savage blow from an umbrella. It was inflicted by a dissolute Irish apple-woman, who, on returning from some orgy to her ill-kept apartment, found Lady Hypatia in the bedroom taking down some oleograph, which, to say the least of it, could not really elevate the mind. ''
* AddedAlliterativeAppeal: Chesterton loved this trope.
* AnachronismStew: Chesterton's play/squib ''The Temptation of St. Anthony'' (1925), based on the dramatic prose poem of the same name by Creator/GustaveFlaubert. The Life-Force, the Time-Spirit, and the Lecturer are modern men who confront St. Anthony, a hermit from the 3rd-4th centuries.
* BadIsGoodAndGoodIsBad: Aztecs and Carthaginians are portrayed this way in "The Everlasting Man". For example, Aztec statues are described as being made intentionally as ugly as possible, and both societies are claimed to have embraced human sacrifice not because they didn't realize it was horrifying, but precisely because they did.
* BeamMeUpScotty: Chesterton never said "When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing—they believe in anything." It's an amalgamation of two quotes from the Literature/FatherBrown stories: "It's the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense and can't see things as they are", from "The Oracle of the Dog", and "You all swore you were hard-shelled materialists; and as a matter of fact you were all balanced on the edge of belief - of belief in almost anything", from "The Miracle of Moon Crescent".
* BoredWithInsanity: Andrew Home in "The Conversion of an Anarchist".
** As well as Gabriel Syme in ''The Man Who Was Thursday''.
* {{Calvinball}}: In his ''Autobiography'', Chesterton describes how he and Creator/HGWells started a running gag in their social circle:
-->''I also remember that it was we who invented the well-known and widespread national game of Gype. All sorts of variations and complications were invented in connection with Gype. There was Land Gype and Water Gype. I myself cut out and coloured pieces of cardboard of mysterious and significant shapes, the instruments of Table Gype; a game for the little ones. It was even duly settled what disease threatened the over-assiduous player; he tended to suffer from Gype's Ear. My friends and I introduced allusions to the fashionable sport in our articles; Bentley successfully passed one through the Daily News and I through some other paper. Everything was in order and going forward; except the game itself, which has not yet been invented.''
* CapitalismIsBad: One of his core political beliefs. He argued that in a society which didn't tolerate depravity, there would be no millionaires.
-->''When I say "Capitalism," I commonly mean something that may be stated thus: "That economic condition in which there is a class of capitalists roughly recognizable and relatively small, in whose possession so much of the capital is concentrated as to necessitate a very large majority of the citizens serving those capitalists for a wage."'' --''The Outline of Sanity'' (1926)
** That being said, he was not a fan of socialism or communism either; in fact, he saw capitalism and socialism as more alike than different in how they centralized economic power. He instead favored a system called [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism distributism]], which could be summarized as "everybody has enough property to work for themselves instead of someone else".
* ColourCodedForYourConvenience: A character with red hair is ''almost'' always Good in Chesterton. Much less frequently, blond hair is evil -- especially if the blondness looks somehow artificial ("gilded"). This may have something to do with the fact that [[AuthorAppeal Chesterton's beloved wife was a redhead]]. Some of the exceptions include:
** [[AlliterativeName Gabriel Gale,]] the protagonist of ''The Poet and the Lunatics'', is blond.
** ''The Man Who Was Thursday'' had it both ways: Gregory's sister is the symbol of all that is good, and Gregory, equally red-headed, is not good at all. Their red hair is seen as part and parcel to their respective goodness and evilness.
--> [[spoiler:"[[EvilRedhead My red hair, like red flames, shall burn up the world ... ]]" ]]
* {{Confessional}}: Very common in GKC's works -- ''The Surprise'' is one example.
* {{Continuation}}: Chesterton's ''The Temptation of St. Anthony'' begins right after the events of Flaubert's work of the same name.
* CorruptChurch: Chesterton was aware that the Christian faith had its share of bad Christians, and he makes this remark in his article "Superstition and Modern Justice", echoing Creator/GiovanniBoccaccio:
-->"I do believe in Christianity, and my impression is that a system must be divine which has survived so much insane mismanagement."
* CouldntFindAPen: A variant in ''The Napoleon Of Notting Hill''. When unable to find any other source of red cloth to make the red and yellow colors of his now-conquered country, the ex-President of Nicaragua stabs himself and uses the blood to stain a handkerchief red.
* TheCuckoolanderWasRight: Chesterton ''loved'' this. Many of his characters take "wise fool"-style radical behavior up to eleven.
* DeadpanSnarker: During the UsefulNotes/FirstWorldWar: "Mr. Chesterton, why aren't you out at the front?" "Madam, if you go around to the side, you will see that I am" (in reference to his weight). Many of Chesterton's characters share this trait.
* DemocracyIsBad: Or at least have definite problems that raise the possibility of a return of monarchy.
* DriverFacesPassenger: In the opening chapter of ''The Ball and the Cross'', Professor Lucifer gets so absorbed in boasting to Brother Michael about the capabilities of his flying machine that he neglects to look where they're going, and nearly flies straight into St Paul's Cathedral.
* DryCrusader: Lord Ivywood, the antagonist of ''The Flying Inn'', introduces a ban on selling alcohol, as part of his general admiration for Islam.
* DuelToTheDeath: ''The Ball and the Cross''.
* TheEndingChangesEverything:
** His short poem ''The Donkey'' is clearly about how ridiculous and pathetic a creature the donkey is... until the last line completely overthrows all of the imagery from the rest of the poem.
** In Chesterton's poem ''Lepanto'', UsefulNotes/JohnOfAustria's HistoricalHeroUpgrade seems to be played straight, until the last verses, where Chesterton talks about the other famous guy who was at the battle and the kind of book he wrote, seem to subvert the trope. You can also visit UsefulNotes/BattleOfLepanto and see the entry under DudeWheresMyReward:
-->''Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath''\\
(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)\\
''And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,''\\
''[[Literature/DonQuixote Up which a lean and foolish knight forever rides in vain,]]''\\
''And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade....''\\
(But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)
* ExactWords: The villain of ''The Flying Inn'' attempts several times to have the protagonists arrested, only for them to point out that what they are doing at that precise moment is not illegal -- in one case, they're not allowed to sell alcohol, but the law doesn't prevent them giving it away.
* [[FamousLastWords/RealLife Famous Last Words]]: "The issue now is clear. It is between light and darkness; and everyone must choose his side." He then added to his secretary Dorothy Collins, who had just entered the room, "Hello, my dear."
* FairyTale: Often cited by GKC (as, for instance, the actors playing "Puss-in-Boots" in ''The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond''), and occasionally authored by him -- ''e.g.'', ''The Coloured Lands''.
* FatAndSkinny: Chesterton was fond of this trope (see ''Thomas Aquinas''), and he and his friend Shaw embodied it...with Shaw as the skinny guy, of course.
* FertileFeet: In ''Tales of the Long Bow''
* TheFinalTemptation: In ''The Ball and the Cross'', [=MacIan=] and Turnbull are each tempted with visions of the establishment of their respective Utopias.
* ForeignerForADay: In ''The Napoleon of Notting Hill'', not only does Notting Hill secede, [[spoiler: it then proceeds to conquer the ''rest of the British Empire''.]]
* FunWithAcronyms: In his younger days, he and some friends belonged to a society known as "I.D.K.". When anyone asked a member what I.D.K. stood for, he would reply solemnly "I Don't Know."
* GainaxEnding: Most noticeably at the end of ''The Ball and the Cross'' and ''The Man Who was Thursday.''
* GentlemanThief: [[Literature/FatherBrown Flambeau]] and "The Ecstatic Thief" in ''Four Faultless Felons'' are examples.
* {{God}}: Is always lurking in the background in GKC's stories, and comes very near to the foreground in some. The Author in ''The Surprise'' is one (partial) example.
* GoldenMeanFallacy: The Duke in ''Magic'' embodies this trope, in a parody of modern liberalism. His approach to disagreements between his friends is that everything must be true FromACertainPointOfView.
* GorgeousPeriodDress: In ''The Napoleon of Notting Hill'', King [[MeaningfulName Auberon]] forces the representatives of various London districts to dress in mediæval-style robes and to be accompanied by heralds and halberdiers. Also, a plot point in "The Three Horsemen of Apocalypse" in ''The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond''.
* TheGreatestStoryNeverTold: The plot of ''The Judgement of Dr. Johnson''; the stories of the Club of Misunderstood Men in ''Four Faultless Felons'' -- GKC was very fond of this trope.
* HappilyMarried: Very common in Chesterton -- no doubt reflecting his own happy marriage. There are, for instance, the Gahagans in ''The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond''.
* HappyEnding: In keeping with his basic theme of the essential goodness of life, Chesterton nearly always ends his works happily.
* HeAlsoDid: Depending on where you're standing, G.K. Chesterton, the famous detective story author, was also a Catholic apologist, or the great Catholic apologist G.K. Chesterton, also wrote MysteryFiction. Oh, and he was also a literary critic, a poet, a journalist, and a bit of a cartoonist, as well.
** He is also famous for "Chesterton's Fence," the philosophical notion that a person who wants to take down a fence because they can see no point in it being there should be prevented from doing so until they understand why it was put up in the first place, because without that understanding they're incapable of judging whether or not it should still be there.
* HeavenAbove: ''The Ball and the Cross'' has Professor Lucifer [[DiscussedTrope discuss]] the sky's divine association to a monk he kidnapped as he ascends through the heavens in his flying machine. The point Lucifer is making is that the skies are as physical and dour as the underworld and expects the monk's faith to shatter, only for the monk to point out that Lucifer's rambling has distracted him from flying the ship. The Professor screams like a girl and nearly dies in a crash.
* HistoricalDomainCharacter:
** In ''Literature/TheBalladOfTheWhiteHorse,'' UsefulNotes/AlfredTheGreat and Guthrum.
** In his play, ''The Judgement of Dr. Johnson'', Dr. Creator/SamuelJohnson, John Boswell, Edmund Burke, ''etc.''
** In [[https://gutenberg.org/files/8092/8092-h/8092-h.htm#link2H_4_0038 "The Shop of Ghosts"]] (a chapter from ''Tremendous Trifles''), Chesterton steps into a toy shop run by Father Christmas himself, who proclaims that he is dying. Chesterton is then joined in the shop by a series of increasingly-old, Christmas-linked authors (Creator/CharlesDickens[[note]]author of ''Literature/AChristmasCarol''[[/note]], [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Steele Sir Richard Steele]][[note]]co-founder of the first version of ''Magazine/TheSpectator'' and author of [[https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/20648/pg20648-images.html#No_269 an essay therein]] about the Christmas generosity of his character Sir Roger de Coverly, a fictional old country gentleman[[/note]], Creator/BenJonson[[note]]author of ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas,_His_Masque Christmas, His Masque]]''[[/note]], etc.), all of whom are shocked to find Father Christmas still alive, because the old man already had one foot in the grave in ''their'' day...
* HistoricalHeroUpgrade:
** ''Lepanto'' pumps up Don Juan of Austria ("The Last Knight of Europe") from Christian military hero to saviour of the Western world from the hordes of darkness and its own political corruption... that is, until you read the last verses; see TheEndingChangesEverything.
** ''Literature/TheBalladOfTheWhiteHorse'' does much the same for [[UsefulNotes/AlfredTheGreat King Alfred]].
* {{Hypocrite}}: Though there are many examples of the straight version of this trope in GKC (as, for instance, in "The Man Who Shot the Fox"), Chesterton is peculiarly fond of a particular [[SubvertedTrope subversion]] of it -- the good man who pretends to be wicked. An outstanding example, in which this trope forms the whole theme of the book, is ''Four Faultless Felons''.
* INeverSaidItWasPoison: In "The Unmentionable Man," Mr. Pond's acquaintance Marcus, a minor French government employee, guesses that M. Louis must be a master blackmailer, since he saw an aristocratic woman beseech him late at night. Pond, in turn, surmises that M. Louis should be deported because he is a blackmailer...and yet cannot be deported, because he is a blackmailer (or rather, because of ''who'' he is blackmailing). Marcus snaps that the Prime Minister is an honest man, despite Mr. Pond saying nothing to the contrary. In short order, Marcus breaks down and admits that while the Prime Minister may be an hones tman, much of the government is corrupt, including, to his disgust, the Interior Minister, who's responsible for enforcing the laws in the first place.
* TheInfiltration: Rather subtly, "The Five of Swords."
* InfractionDistraction: His ''Father Brown'' stories make use of this, most famously in "The Flying Stars."
* KickThemWhileTheyAreDown: Happens in ''The Ball and the Cross''
* LastKiss: John and Olive in ''The Return of Don Quixote''.
* LeonineContract: A discussion of this trope is a crucial clue in one of the ''Paradoxes of Mr. Pond''
* LiteralMetaphor: The subject of his poem ''The Literal Land'', PlayedForLaughs. The speaker warns about things like calling someone "an old bear" or your quarters a place to "hang out", lest that person literally turns into a bear and you find yourself hanged outside the window, respectively.
* LiteralistSnarking: Chesterton once acquired a copy of ''Platitudes in the Making'' by a Holbrook Jackson and wrote his responses in green. One of his responses is as follows:
-->'''Jackson:''' The future will look upon man as we look upon the ichthyosaurus—as an extinct monster.\\
'''Chesterton:''' The "future" won't look upon anything. No eyes.
* LoveAtFirstSight: ''Manalive'' and many others.
* MadMathematician: In "The Moderate Murderer" in ''Four Faultless Felons'', Tom Traill's tutor, Hume, affects bizarre behaviour as a means to focus the underdeveloped boy's attention.
* MagiciansAreWizards: The Counjurer in ''Magic.''
* MakeUpIsEvil: In ''The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond'', one character comments on how this trope is decreasing.
* MeaningfulName: In ''The Flying Inn'', there's a chemist named Crooke, who assists his customers in getting around prohibition legislation by selling alcohol as medicine.
* MeaningfulRename: In ''The Return of Don Quixote''.
* MindScrew: Some of his stories go into this territory, in particular ''The Man Who Was Thursday'' and the final chapter of ''The Ball and the Cross''.
* MortonsFork: Although, in ''Manalive'', the use of opposite arguments in favor of Innocent Smith's guilt are called "Heads I win, tails you lose" arguments, they are actually an example of this trope.
* MoodWhiplash: The original ''The Temptation of St. Anthony'' by Gustave Flaubert is a serious depiction of spiritual torment, based on when St. Anthony faced severe temptations and demonic attacks in the Egyptian desert. Chesterton's "continuation" lightens the mood by introducing [[AnachronismStew anachronistic characters representing modernity]].
* MundaneMadeAwesome: In ''Heretics'', the essay "[[http://www.pagebypagebooks.com/Gilbert_K_Chesterton/Heretics/On_Mr_Rudyard_Kipling_and_Making_the_World_Small_p1.html On Mr. Rudyard Kipling and Making the World Small]]" begins by exploring this trope. The idea gets a whole book of essays to itself in ''Tremendous Trifles''.
-->The word "signal-box" is unpoetical. But the thing signal-box is not unpoetical; it is a place where men, in an agony of vigilance, light blood-red and sea-green fires to keep other men from death.
* NewEraSpeech: Three contrasting ones ''by the same character'' in ''The Ball and the Cross''.
* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: In ''The Napoleon of Notting Hill'', King Auberon is modeled on English author Max Beerbohm. Chesterton himself was later subject to this; his friend and opponent Creator/GeorgeBernardShaw caricatured him as "Immenso Champernoon" in an unproduced portion of ''Back to Methuselah''. (Unproduced because he realized he could not do a better job of satirizing Chesterton than Chesterton himself.)
* ObfuscatingInsanity: [[spoiler: ''Manalive''.]]
* OneSceneTwoMonologues: In ''The Return of Don Quixote'', Herne and Archer talk about the play ''Blondel the Troubadour''. One is discussing his chances to show off in it; the other is discussing its philosophical underpinnings. Neither of them figures out that they are talking past each other.
* PeriodPiece: A characater in ''The Return of Don Quixote'' perpetrates one of these:
->''His historical novel about Agincourt was quite good considered as a modern historical novel; that is, considered as the adventures of a modern public schoolboy at a fancy dress ball. ''
* PsychopathicManchild: Innocent Smith from ''Manalive''. [[spoiler:[[SubvertedTrope Not]]]].
* PullARabbitOutOfMyHat: In ''Magic'' Patricia Carleon imagines conjurors must be able to provide meals for themselves inexpensively by pulling rabbits out of their hats.
* RealDreamsAreWeirder: Analyzed in the essay "[[http://inamidst.com/stuff/gkc/dreams Dreams]]" as the reason many literary dream sequences don't ring true.
* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Pump delivers one to Lord Ivywood in ''The Flying Inn'':
-->A voice called out to him quietly from the other end of the tunnel. There was something touching and yet terrible about a voice so human coming out of that inhuman darkness. If Philip Ivywood had been really a poet, and not rather its opposite, an aesthete, he would have known that all the past and people of England were uttering their oracle out of the cavern. As it was, he only heard a publican wanted by the police.--Yet even he paused, and indeed seemed spellbound. \\
"My lord, I would like a word. I learned my catechism and never was with the Radicals. I want you to look at what you've done to me. You've stolen a house that was mine as that one's yours. You've made me a dirty tramp, that was a man respected in church and market. Now you send me where I might have cells or the Cat. If I might make so bold, what do you suppose I think of you? Do you think because you go up to London and settle it with lords in Parliament and bring back a lot of papers and long words, that makes any difference to the man you do it to? By what I can see, you're just a bad and cruel master, like those God punished in the old days; like Squire Varney the weasels killed in Holy Wood. Well, parson always said one might shoot at robbers, and I want to tell your lordship," he ended respectfully, "that I have a gun."
* RescueRomance: Almost avoided in ''The Return of Don Quixote'' because Monkey feels it's taking advantage of it.
* TheReveal: One of the bases of MysteryFiction, of course, but common throughout GKC's work, even his non-fiction, as one of his fundamental themes. It comes clearly to the fore, for instance, in his posthumously published play, ''The Surprise''.
* RevealingCoverup: The conspiracy of "The Word" in "The Loyal Traitor" in ''Four Faultless Felons. ''
* RightfulKingReturns: The republic in ''The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond'' is in danger of this. [[spoiler: In "The Unmentionable Man," there is, in fact, a king who hopes to return, and has enough popularity to do it, [[UsefulNotes/{{Jesus}} but it's implied that he may not be an earthly king]].]]
* RockBeatsLaser: In ''The Return of Don Quixote'', mediaeval recreationists go out to arrest some people, with halberds rather than guns, and are scorned as foolish. They succeed.
* RoyalBlood: Royalty abounds in GKC's from his earliest to his latest works -- and, oddly, for such a fan of the French Revolution, is very often treated with real sympathy, as in "The Unmentionable Man" in one of Chesterton's last books, ''The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond.'' (''See also the next entry''.)
* {{Ruritania}}: "The Loyal Traitor," in ''Four Faultless Felons,'' takes place in the mythical Teutonic kingdom of Pavonia (specifically stated not to be in the Balkans while directly referencing Hope's novel). There are also two unnamed rival Balkan kingdoms in "The Tower of Treason." Ruritania is actually mentioned by name in ''The Everlasting Man''.
* SittingOnTheRoof: A memorable scene in ''Manalive.'' When [[BlitheSpirit Innocent Smith]] climbs up, Michael Moon and Arthur Inglewood follow him to make sure he doesn't cause any trouble...and realize they're enjoying themselves.
* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: ''The Ball and the Cross''.
* SpottingTheThread: In the first ''Literature/FatherBrown'' story "The Blue Cross", Flambeau tries to convince Father Brown that he is a fellow Catholic priest, but then in conversation tries to argue for moral relativism. This is a running theme for Creator/GKChesterton: other Father Brown stories have him catching impersonators out by ignorance of Anglican High Church/Low Church distinctions, or attacking reason as a supposed fellow Catholic priest. Also, ''Literature/TheManWhoWasThursday'' has an anarchist disguised as a bishop similarly give himself away by attacking reason, along with another impersonating a colonel acting in the manner of a comically stereotyped BloodKnight.
* SubvertedTrope: ''The Man Who Knew Too Much.'' A book of detective stories, in which the sleuth works out both whodunit -- and why he will get away with it.
* SuicideIsShameful: He argued in his book ''Orthodoxy'' that suicide was exactly as wrong as the annihilation of the universe, since they're the same thing from the perspective of the one doing it. A suicide, he argues, has insulted every bird in the heavens and every leaf on the trees by declaring it unworthy of living for. Interestingly, there are hints in his works that he'd considered suicide himself in his pre-Christian days. He also provides the trope's page quote:
-->''"The man who kills a man kills a man. The man who kills himself kills all men. As far as he is concerned, he wipes out the world."''
* StageMagician: The Conjurer in ''Magic''
* StillWearingTheOldColors: In an early scene in ''The Napoleon of Notting Hill'', the deposed president of Nicaragua goes to some trouble to wear the colours of his now-conquered country.
* SwordCane: Carried by GKC himself. He brainstormed by [[MundaneMadeAwesome poking at the couch cushions in his office with it.]]
* TakeAThirdOption: In a political sense. At a time when Capitalism and Socialism had become the two dominant creeds, Chesterton rejected both[[labelnote:Note]]Although between the two he preferred socialism, believing capitalism led to the oppression of the poor by the rich[[/labelnote]]. Instead, he became an advocate for a system called [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism/ Distributism]], which proposed wide-spread ownership of property and the means of production. It never really caught on.
* TakingTheVeil: In ''The Return of Don Quixote'', Herne lampshades how Rosamund did not do this. Rosamund serenely explains that she had still hoped, and so didn't.
* TrailersAlwaysSpoil: [[DeadpanSnarker Commented on]] in the poem "Commercial Candour":
-->"...For the front of the cover shows somebody shot
-->And the back of the cover will tell you the plot."
* TroubleEntendre: Subverted in "The White Pillars Murder."
* TwoRightsMakeAWrong: One of the ''Paradoxes of Mr Pond'', "The Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse", concerns a field marshal whose soldiers were too eager to obey his orders, with the result that the orders were not carried out. If only one man had been that loyal it would have worked, but with two soldiers determined to fulfill his orders to execute a poet, the man ends up released.
* UnaccustomedAsIAmToPublicSpeaking: Referenced in ''Magic'' -- and, indeed, in nearly every context, GKC was fond of referencing his own debility. Did he not ''know?''
* VitriolicBestBuds: With Creator/GeorgeBernardShaw in RealLife.
--> '''Chesterton:''' George, you look like you just came from a country in a famine!
--> '''Shaw:''' G.K., you look like you caused it!
* WarriorPoet: In ''Literature/TheBalladOfTheWhiteHorse'', there is not only Elf the minstrel ("whose hand was heavy on the sword, though light upon the string..."), but [[UsefulNotes/AlfredTheGreat King Alfred]] himself.
* WaterTowerDown: In ''The Napoleon of Notting Hill'', threatening to do this is how Wayne finally gets his enemies to surrender. Indeed, [[WordOfGod Chesterton]] described the use of the Waterworks as a weapon as part of the original inspiration.
-->''"In the event of your not doing so, the Lord High Provost of Notting Hill desires to announce that he has just captured the Waterworks Tower, just above you, on Campden Hill, and that within ten minutes from now, that is, on the reception through me of your refusal, he will open the great reservoir and flood the whole valley where you stand in thirty feet of water. God save King Auberon!"\\
Buck had dropped his glass and sent a great splash of wine over the road.\\
"But--but--" he said; and then by a last and splendid effort of his great sanity, looked the facts in the face.\\
"We must surrender," he said. "You could do nothing against fifty thousand tons of water coming down a steep hill, ten minutes hence. We must surrender. Our four thousand men might as well be four. Vicisti Galilaee! Perkins, you may as well get me another glass of wine."''
* WhenTreesAttack: "The Trees of Pride"
* WomenAreWiser: Mr. Isidore Green, in "The Ecstatic Thief" section of ''Four Faultless Felons'', is rather woolly-headed about his affairs, and has to depend on his much more practical wife to take care of him. May be based on the author's own experience: he was absentminded, and apparently once telegraphed his wife while wandering around London, "Where am I supposed to be?" Her answer: "Home."
* WouldNotShootACivilian
* WriterOnBoard: Common with GKC, as in ''The Ball and the Cross'', when Father Michael (a Bulgarian monk) and Evan [=MacIan=] (a Scottish Highlander) both talk at times suspiciously like an English ''littérateur''.
* YeGoodeOldeDays: GKC was (and is) often accused of over-romanticizing the past, especially the Middle Ages, though he claimed he was merely correcting a falsely "progressive" view of history.
* {{Zeerust}}: Deliberately averted in ''The Napoleon of Notting Hill'', in which the future is the same as the 1904 present, only more so. This is justified in the foreword, wherein GKC explains a game people play, called "Cheat the Prophet", wherein they listen politely to what clever men say about what will happen in the future, wait until the clever men are dead, and then go and do something completely different. As the only thing that has not been guessed is that nothing will change, the people... don't. Except that Chesterton himself ''just got through predicting it'' -- this probably also qualifies as a preemptive LampshadeHanging on the impending obsolescence of his prediction, or alternately, [[BatmanGambit that he was hoping they'd try to Cheat the Prophet and thus end up doing exactly what he wanted them to]].

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