Bob Dylan and GKC

From the latest issue of Gilbert (March/April 2023), on p. 33, there is this interesting tidbit:

So, Fr. O'Conner's guidance and example as a real priest was the spark that became Chesterton's ficitional priest Father Brown, the hero of 53 mystery stories, as well as movies and television shows (the most recent of those was referenced by Bob Dylan as being "binge-worthy").

Unfortunately, while I have not seen the "most recent" of the television shows (other than one episode), which is produced by the BBC, from what I have heard it is not faithful to the spirit of the original stories, whatever other merits it may have. That said, to the extent it encourages people to read the originals, it is to that extent good at least.

Just as it was the mark of old tyranny to stretch the law, so it will be the mark of new tyranny to make a law that can be stretched. To a great extent, at least, what used to be called common law used the language of common-sense. That is, it used words that were a little too popular to be entirely twisted out of their ordinary sense. Stealing could hardly be stretched to mean taking ten minutes of a man's time. Murder could hardly be made to include any sort of material inconvenience, that anybody might say had shortened his life. But if the law begins to deal with new scientific words, that do not as yet correspond to any popular and recognised things, we have no public protection against their being extended to touch anything or anybody.

-March 17, 1923, Illustrated London News

It is always hard to make a rule about the claim of the amateur to contradict the expert. One test, which would by itself cart away a great deal of lumber, is the rule that none is a specialist outside his speciality. In magazines and such modern arenas this truism is often oddly disregarded [...] But there is yet another line along which the conclusions of the expert may lawfully be tested by the amateur. And these are the cases in which the expert actually asserts what the amateur is able from his own knowledge to deny. We are not bound to believe the Astronomer Royal when he disproves the sun in heaven; and though I may respect my doctor when he tells me I am dying, I shall differ from him if he tells me I am dead.

-March 2,1916, New Witness

It is a curious irony that [...] a modern man thinks that people in the Middle Ages believed anything they were told. For in truth he only thinks it because he himself believes anything he is told about the Middle Ages. It is modern credulity that has invented mediaeval credulity.

-November 18, 1922, Illustrated London News

In the most modern politics, unfortunately, it may truly be said that those who make history never know history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.

-The End of the Armistice 
(collection of essays published posthumously in 1940)

 

Perhaps a truly great thing always tries to grow small; and there is hidden here a mystery of microscopic ambition. For though the Magnificat magnifies the Lord, it is only just after the Lord has minimized Himself.

-The Resurrection of Rome (1930)

GKC in "The Sandman" Netflix series (sort of...)

GKC (sort of) in "The Sandman" Netflix series, and about a minute into the clip quoting from GKC's book Orthodoxy:

"...the miracle of humanity itself should be always more vivid to us than any marvels of power..."

Obviously, the character of Gilbert/Fiddler's Green is not literally GKC, but he was modeled on GKC (Neil Gaiman being an admirer of Chesterton).

Terry Deary on GKC

Terry Deary, describing the books that changed his life, the first on the list being GKC's The Napoelon of Notting Hill

My school texts like the Thomas Hardy we were forced to read were so dull. When I came across this Chesterton book at the age of around 17 then I realised books could be exciting and create colourful new worlds. I understood that books don’t have to be serious and filled with miserable heroes like Tess of the D’Urbervilles or the Mayor of Casterbridge. They can lead to a meeting with fantastical people. Chesterton made me a writer.

https://www.readersdigest.co.uk/culture/books/meet-the-author/terry-deary-books-that-changed-my-life

Roma Downey quoting GKC

Well, OK, to speak more strictly, she actually misattributed a quote to GKC, it would appear. But still....

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=10156164832444273

J.K. Rowling also once misattributed a quote to GKC on Twitter (that someone had first misattributed to her), and ironically enough had the hashtag "#CorrectAttributionDay" :-) 

Charlotte Mason

I have reflected; and I think I see the place of the amateur.

The obscure things, the details and disputed points, the great scholar can always see and note better than we can. It is the obvious things that he cannot see. I do not say this in mere depreciation; I think it is really inseparable from that concentrated research to which the world owes so much. It is the truth in the traditional picture of the absent-minded professor, who remains gazing at a fossil or a Roman coin and fails to observe external objects, such as a house on fire, a revolution, an escaped elephant putting its head through the skylight, and similar things....it is precisely because I am so much less learned than he that it is my privilege to lead him through common ways, pointing out elephants and other enormous objects.

-The Superstition of the Sceptic (1925)

"The New War on Christmas"

G.K.'s Weekly, 
December 26, 1925