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Hilaire Belloc

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Author

The Resume

    (July 27, 1870-July 16, 1953)
    Born in La Celle-Saint-Cloud, France
    Full name: Joseph Hilaire Pierre Rene Belloc
    British author who wrote extensively on travel, history and politics but is most well known for his poetry and defenses of the Catholic Church and European culture
    Member of Parliament 1906-1910
    Taught at Fordham University in New York

Why he might be annoying:

    He was born in France, raised in England, and married an American.
    He once walked from the midwest to California to visit his fiancee.
    He only held one full-time job in his life, editing a magazine from 1914-1920 and often had money troubles.
    He wrote a novel, 'The Four Men,' which was about four men traveling together with each of the men representing one of Belloc's personalities.
    He once said, 'It is sometimes necessary to lie damnably in the interests of the nation.'
    He was a poor fact-checker and made major mistakes in historical writings.
    He was nicknamed 'Old Thunder' as a child because of his bellicose attitude.

Why he might not be annoying:

    He graduated from Oxford with first class honors.
    He suffered a crippling stroke in 1942 which caused him to fall into a fire in 1953, leading to an agonizing death several days later.
    He was friends with G. K. Chesterton and George Bernard Shaw. Like Chesterton he supported the social theory of distributionism and was instrumental in Chesterton's conversion to Catholicism.
    He was an outstanding defender of his Catholic faith.
    He disliked and criticized historians with an axe to grind i.e., Will and Ariel Durant and H. G. Wells.
    Though smeared as an anti-semite, he repeatedly criticized anti-semitism and the Nazis even before they came to power.
    Syd Barrett was a fan, and his song, Matilda Mother was taken from Belloc's Cautionary Tales.
    One of his sons was killed in WWI and another in WWII.
    He wrote 153 books!
    He liked writing humorous and nonsense poetry for children.

Credit: tom_jeffords


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 11 Votes: 54.55% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 3 Votes: 33.33% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 5 Votes: 40.0% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 10 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2015, Out of 12 Votes: 41.67% Annoying
    In 2014, Out of 24 Votes: 29.17% Annoying
    In 2013, Out of 8 Votes: 62.50% Annoying
    In 2012, Out of 11 Votes: 45.45% Annoying
    In 2011, Out of 17 Votes: 58.82% Annoying
    In 2010, Out of 81 Votes: 50.62% Annoying
    In 2009, Out of 123 Votes: 47.97% Annoying