Lepanto

Just a few interesting facts about Chesterton's poem Lepanto that I wished to gather in one place.

-J.R.R. Tolkien was "quite fond of reciting" the poem. [1]

The poem "was a favourite of [Theodore Roosevelt's] eldest daughter Alice, who could (and often did) 'recite all nine stanzas at a rapid clip.' In later years, reciting this poem with her granddaughter Joanna was a source of particular delight for Alice Roosevelt Longworth—something that drew them together." [2]

-Jorge Luis Borges translated Lepanto into Spanish [3]

 -Hilaire Belloc wrote that the poem "is not only the summit of Chesterton's achievement in verse but the summit of high rhetorical verse in all our generation. I have said this so often that I am almost tired of saying it again, but I must continue to say it."

1. http://platitudesundone.blogspot.com/2011/12/jrr-tolkien-and-gkc.html
2. http://platitudesundone.blogspot.com/2013/02/what-supreme-genius-chesterton-is-i.html
3. http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/lepanto-spanish.txt
4. On the Place of Gilbert Chesterton in English Letters (1940)