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