FuschiaReads.

G.K. Chesterton
First Published 1908
This Ed. 1986 Penguin 187pp SC

‘The suburb of Saffron Park lay on the sunset side of London, as red and ragged as a cloud of sunset.’

Gabriel Syme is a Poet. An occupation that makes me adore him. He is also an undercover police detective – infiltrating a dangerous ‘cell’ of anarchists in London his mission.

“He was one of those who are driven early in life into too conservative an attitude by the bewildering folly of most revolutionists…His father cultivated art and self-realization; his mother went in for simplicity and hygiene. Hence the child, during his tenderer years, was wholly unacquainted with any drink between the extremes of absinthe and cocoa…The more his mother preached a more than Puritan abstinence the more did his father expand into a more than pagan latitude; and by the time the former had come to enforcing vegetarianism, the latter had pretty well reached the point of defending cannibalism…’

Gabriel becomes ‘Thursday’ – each of the seven members of the Central Anarchist Council for reasons of security calling themselves a day of the week. This non-stop tale of action, betrayal and adventure folows Gabriel as he seeks to bring down Sunday - the leader of the group before plannng to blow up the Czar and the President of the French Republic in Paris.

Mr Chesterton writes with that depth of vocabulary that makes you realise how limited modern English is becoming. He is able to discuss the philosophies and motivations of men who will kill for their beliefs whilst maintaining a lovely ironic tone that keeps the story moving forward. There is no let up in plot and the ending is only confusing if you forget that this story is in fact ‘a nightmare’.

It was kind of quaint for me to read about the terrible ‘Anarchists’ – a word that conjured up for me images of Doc Martens and safety pins rather than dynamite and assassination. But as Kingsley Amis reminds up in his enthusiastic introduction, at the time of writing they were a real and potent threat - as quaint as any modern terrorists.

Bravo Mr Chesterton, what a hoot of a story! I am story that I have neglected you all these years.