From George Bernard Shaw's review of GKC"s book A Short History of England (the review being printed in The Observer, November 4, 1917):

For Mr. Chesterton knows his epochs, and can tell you when the temple became a den of thieves, though he leaves out half the kings and gives never a date at all. Far from being discursive, as the critics are saying, he is at once the most concise and the fullest historian this distressful country has yet found.

[found in G.K. Chesterton: The Critical Judgments, Part I: 1900-1937 ed. by Denis Conlon, p. 352]