City of Worcester
—  City & Non-metropolitan district  —
Coat of arms of City of Worcester Coat of arms
City of Worcester shown within Worcestershire
Coordinates: 52°11′28″N 2°13′20″W / 52.19123°N 2.22231°W / 52.19123; -2.22231
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Constituent country	England
Region	West Midlands
Non-metropolitan county	Worcestershire
Status	Non-metropolitan district, City
Admin HQ	Worcester
Incorporated
Government
• Type	Non-metropolitan district council
• Borough council	Worcester City Council (TBA (council NOC))
• Mayor	Dr. David Tibbutt
• MPs	Robin Walker (Conservative)
Area
• Total	12.85 sq mi (33.28 km2)
Area rank	305th (of 326)
Population (2010 est.)
• Total	94,800
• Rank	237th (of 326)
• Density	7,400/sq mi (2,800/km2)
Time zone	GMT (UTC0)
• Summer (DST)	BST (UTC+1)
Postcodes	WR1-5
Area code(s)	01905
ONS code	47UE
OS grid reference	SO849548
Website	www.worcester.gov.uk

Worcester skyline from the River Severn

The City of Worcester, commonly known as Worcester, (ⁱ/ˈwʊstər/ WUUS-tər), is a city and county town of Worcestershire in the West Midlands of England. Worcester is situated some 30 miles (48 km) southwest of Birmingham and 29 miles (47 km) north of Gloucester, and has an approximate population of 94,000 people. The River Severn runs through the middle of the city, overlooked by the twelfth-century Worcester Cathedral. The site of the final battle of the Civil War, Worcester was where Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army defeated King Charles II's Cavaliers, resulting in the English Interregnum, the ten-year period during which England and Wales became a republic. Worcester was the home of Royal Worcester Porcelain and the birthplace of the composer Sir Edward Elgar. It houses the Lea and Perrins factory where the traditional Worcestershire Sauce is made, and is home to one of the UK's fastest growing universities, the University of Worcester.

History[link]

Occupation of the site of Worcester can be dated back to Neolithic times, a village surrounded by defensive ramparts having been founded on the eastern bank of the River Severn in around 400 BC. The position, which commanded a ford on the river, was used in the first century by the Romans to establish what may at first have been a fort on the military route from Glevum (Gloucester) to Viroconium (Wroxeter) but which soon developed – as the frontier of the empire was pushed westwards – into an industrial town with its own pottery kilns and iron-smelting plants.

A map of Worcester in 1806

Tudor buildings in Friar Street

Tudor building with jettied upper storey in New Street.

Roman Worcester (which may have been the Vertis mentioned in the seventh century Ravenna Cosmography) was a thriving trading and manufacturing centre for some three hundred years, though by the time of the Roman withdrawal from Britain in 407 it had dwindled considerably in size and is not recorded again until the mid-seventh century when documents mention the Anglo-Saxon settlement Weorgoran ceaster (settlement of the people by the winding river).^[1] The fact that Worcester was chosen at this time – in preference to both the much larger Gloucester and the royal centre of Winchcombe – to be the Episcopal See of a new diocese covering the area suggests that there may have been a well established, and powerful, Christian community living on the site when it fell into English hands.

The town was almost destroyed in 1041 after a rebellion against the punitive taxation of Harthacanute. The town was attacked several times (in 1139, 1150 and 1151) during "The Anarchy", i.e. civil war between King Stephen and Empress Matilda, daughter of Henry I. This is the background to the well-researched historical novel The Virgin in the Ice, part of Ellis Peters' "Cadfael" series, which begins with the words:

"It was early in November of 1139 that the tide of civil war, lately so sluggish and inactive, rose suddenly to wash over the city of Worcester, wash away half of its lifestock, property and women, and send all those of its inhabitants who could get away in time scurrying for their lives northwards away from the marauders". (These are mentioned as having arrived from Gloucester, leaving a long lasting legacy of bitterness between the two cities.)

By late medieval times the population had grown to around 10,000 as the manufacture of cloth started to become a large local industry. The town was designated a county corporate, giving it autonomy from local government.

Worcester was the site of the Battle of Worcester (3 September 1651), when Charles II attempted to forcefully regain the crown, in the fields a little to the west and south of the city, near the village of Powick. However, Charles II was defeated and returned to his headquarters in what is now known as King Charles house in the Cornmarket, before fleeing in disguise to Boscobel House in Shropshire from where he eventually escaped to France. Worcester was one of the cities loyal to the King in that war, for which it was given the epithet "Fidelis Civitas" ("The Faithful City"). This motto has been incorporated into the city's coat of arms.^[2]

In 1670, the River Severn broke its banks and the subsequent flood was the worst ever seen by Worcester. A brass plate can be found on a wall on the path to the cathedral by the path along the river showing how high this flood went, and other flood heights of more recent times are also shown in stone bricks. The closest flood height to what is known as The Flood of 1670 was when the Severn flooded in the torrential rains of July 2007.

The Royal Worcester Porcelain Company factory was founded by Dr John Wall in 1751, although it no longer produces goods. A handful of decorators are still employed at the factory and the Museum is still open.

During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Worcester was a major centre for glove making, employing nearly half the glovers in England at its peak (over 30,000 people).^[3] In 1815 the Worcester and Birmingham Canal opened, allowing Worcester goods to be transported to a larger conurbation.

The British Medical Association (BMA) was founded in the Board Room of the old Worcester Royal Infirmary building in Castle Street in 1832.^[4] While most of the Royal Infirmary has now been demolished to make way for the University of Worcester's new city campus, the original Georgian building has been preserved.^[5] There are plans to reopen the building as a medical museum.^[6]

During World War II, the city was chosen to be the seat of an evacuated government in case of mass German invasion. The War Cabinet, along with Winston Churchill and some 16.000 state workers, would have moved to Hindlip Hall (now part of the complex forming the Headquarters of West Mercia Police), 3 miles (4.8 km) north of Worcester, and Parliament would have temporarily seated in Stratford-upon-Avon. The former RAF station RAF Worcester was located east of Northwick.

In the 1950s and 1960s large areas of the medieval centre of Worcester were demolished and rebuilt as a result of decisions by town planners. There is still a significant area of medieval Worcester remaining, but it is a small fraction of what was present before the redevelopments.

The current city boundaries date from 1974, when the Local Government Act 1972 transferred the parishes of Warndon and St. Peter the Great County into the city.

Governance[link]

The Conservatives had a majority on the council from 2003 to 2007, when they lost a by-election to Labour meaning the council had no overall control.^[7] The Conservatives remained with the most seats overall with 17 out of 35 seats after the 2008 election.^[8] Worcester has one member of Parliament, Robin Walker of the Conservative Party, who represents the Worcester constituency as of the May 2010 general election.^[9]

The County of Worcestershire's local government arrangement is formed of a non-metropolitan county (Worcestershire County Council) and six non-metropolitan districts, with Worcester City Council being the district for most of Worcester, with a small area of the St. Peters suburb actually falling within neighbouring Wychavon District. The Worcester City Council area includes two parish councils, these being Warndon Parish Council and St Peter the Great Parish Council.

Geography[link]

Notable suburbs in Worcester include Barbourne, Blackpole, Cherry Orchard, Claines, Diglis, Northwick, Red Hill, Ronkswood, St Peter the Great (also simply known as St Peters), Tolladine, Warndon and Warndon Villages (which was once the largest housing development in the Country when the area was being constructed in the late 1980s/very early 1990s). Most of Worcester is on the eastern side of the River Severn; Henwick, Lower Wick, St. John's and Dines Green are on the western side.

Climate[link]

Worcester enjoys a temperate climate with warm summers and mild winters generally. However, the city can experience more extreme weather and flooding is often a problem.^[10] During the winters of 2009-10 and 2010-11 the city experienced prolonged periods of sub-freezing temperatures and heavy snowfalls. In December 2010 the temperature dropped to −18 °C (−0.4 °F) in the city and in nearby Pershore the temperature fell to −19.5 °C (−3.1 °F).^[11] The Severn and the Teme partially froze over in Worcester during this cold snap. In contrast, Worcester recorded 37 °C (98.6 °F) on 3 August 1990.^[12]

Skyline of Worcester viewed from Worcester Cathedral

Demography and religion[link]

The 2001 census^[14] recorded Worcester's population at 93,353. About 96.5% of Worcester's population was white; of which 94.2% were White British,^[15] greater than the national average.^[16] The largest religious group are Christians, who made up 77% of the city's population.^[17] People who reported having no religion or who did not state their religion made up 21% of the city's population. Other religions totaled less than 2% of the population. Ethnic minorities include people of Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, Italian and Polish origin, with the largest single minority group being British Pakistanis, numbering around 1,200, approximately 1.3% of Worcester's population.^[17] This has led to Worcester containing a small but diverse range of religious groups; as well as the commanding Worcester Cathedral (Church of England), there are also Catholic and Baptist churches, a large centre for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), an Islamic mosque, and a number of smaller interest groups regarding Eastern Religions such as Buddhism and the Hare Krishnas.^[18]

Worcester is the seat of a Church of England bishop. His official signature is his Christian name followed by Wigorn, which is also occasionally used as an abbreviation for the name of the county.

Economy[link]

The city of Worcester, located on the River Severn and with transport links to Birmingham and other parts of the Midlands through the vast canal network, became an important centre for many light industries. The late-Victorian period saw the growth of ironfounders, like Heenan & Froude, Hardy & Padmore and McKenzie & Holland.

Glove industry[link]

One of the flourishing industries of Worcester was glove making. Worcester's Gloving industry peaked between 1790 to 1820 when about 30,000 where employed by 150 companies. At this time nearly half of the Glove manufacturers of Britain were located in Worcestershire.

In the 19th century the industry declined because import taxes on foreign competitors, mainly from France, were greatly reduced. By the middle of the 20th century, only a few Worcester gloving companies survived since gloves became less fashionable and free trade allowed in cheaper imports from the Far East.
Nevertheless at least 3 large glove manufacturing companies still survived until the late 20th century: Dent Allcroft, Fownes and Milore. Queen Elizabeth II's coronation gloves were designed by Emil Rich and manufactured in the Worcester based Milore factory.^[19][20]

Manufacturing[link]

The inter-war years saw the rapid growth of engineering, producing machine tools James Archdale, H.W. Ward, castings for the motor industry Worcester Windshields and Casements, mining machinery Mining Engineering Company (MECO) which later became part of Joy Mining Machinery and open-top cans Williamsons, though G H Williamson and Sons had become part of the Metal Box Co in 1930. Later the company became Carnaud Metal Box PLC.

Worcester Porcelain operated in Worcester until 2008 when the factory was closed down due to the recession. However, the site of Worcester Porcelain still houses the Worcester Porcelain Museum which is open daily to visitors.^[21]

One of Worcester's most famous products, Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce is made and bottled in the Midland Road factory in Worcester, which has been the home of Lea & Perrins since 16 October 1897. Mr Lea and Mr Perrins originally met in a chemist's shop on the site of the now Debenhams store in the Crowngate Shopping Centre.

The surprising foundry heritage of the city is represented by Morganite Crucible^[22] at Norton which produces graphitic shaped products and cements for use in the modern industry.

The Kays^[23] mail order business was founded in Worcester in the 1880s and operated from numerous premises in the city^[24] until 2007. It was then bought out by Reality, owner of the Grattan catalogue. Kays' former warehouse building was knocked down in 2008. Worcester is the home of what is claimed to be the oldest newspaper in the world, Berrow's Worcester Journal, which traces its descent from a news-sheet that started publication in 1690. The city is also a major retail centre with several covered shopping centres that has most major chains represented as well as a host of independent shops and restaurants, particularly in Friar Street and New Street.

Retail trade[link]

Worcester’s main shopping centre is the High Street, home to the stores of major retail chains such as Marks & Spencer, Pandora (jewelry), House of Fraser, TK Maxx, Primark, Next, and Debenhams. Part of the High Street was modernised in 2005 amid much controversy, many comments were reported in the Worcester News. Many of the issues focussing on the felling of long-standing trees, the duration of the works (caused by the weather and an archaeological find) and the removal of flagstones outside the city’s eighteenth century Guildhall. The other main thoroughfares are The Shambles and Broad Street, while The Cross (and its immediate surrounding area) is the city’s financial centre and location of the majority of Worcester’s main bank branches.

There are three main covered shopping centres in the City Centre, the CrownGate Shopping Centre, Cathedral Plaza and Reindeer Court. There are three retail parks, the Elgar and Blackpole Retail Parks, which are located in the Blackpole area of the city, and the Shrub Hill Retail Park which is located immediately outside the city centre.

Landmarks[link]

Worcester Cathedral at night.

Probably the most famous landmark in Worcester is its imposing Worcester Cathedral. The current building, formally named The Cathedral Church of Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary, was begun in 1084 while its crypt dates from the tenth century. The chapter house is the only circular one in the country while the cathedral also has the distinction of having the tomb of King John. Limited parts of the city wall still remain.

There are three main parks in Worcester, Cripplegate Park, Gheluvelt Park and Fort Royal Park, the latter being on one of the battles sites of the English Civil War. In addition, there is a large open area known as Pitchcroft to the North of the city centre on the east bank of the River Severn, which, apart from those days when it is being used for horse racing, is a public space.

Gheluvelt Park was opened as a memorial to commemorate the Worcestershire Regiment's 2nd Battalion after their part in the Battle of Gheluvelt, during World War I.

There are also two large woodlands in the city, Perry Wood, at twelve hectares, and Nunnery Wood, covering twenty-one hectares. Perry Wood is often said to be the place where Oliver Cromwell met and made a pact with the devil.^[25] Nunnery Wood is an integral part of the adjacent and popular Worcester Woods Country Park, itself next door to County Hall on the east side of the city.

Destinations from Worcester[link]

	Tenbury Wells, Ludlow	Droitwich, Kidderminster, Dudley, Wolverhampton	Bromsgrove, Redditch, Birmingham
	Leominster, Bromyard		Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwick
		Worcester    East
	Hereford, Malvern	Tewkesbury, Upton-Upon-Severn, Gloucester, Cheltenham, Bristol	Banbury, Pershore, Evesham, Oxford

Transport[link]

Road[link]

Worcester Shrub Hill station.

The M5 Motorway runs north-south immediately to the east of the City, and is accessed by Junction 6 (Worcester North) and Junction 7 (Worcester South). This makes the city easily accessible by car to most parts of the country, including London which is only 120 miles (190 km) away (via the M5, M42 and M40).

Several A roads pass through the city. The A449 road runs south-west to Malvern and north to Kidderminster. The A44 runs south-east to Evesham and west to Leominster and Aberystwyth and crosses Worcester Bridge. The A38 trunk road runs south to Tewkesbury and Gloucester and north-north-east to Droitwich and Birmingham. The A4103 goes west-south-west to Hereford. The A422 heads east to Alcester, branching from the A44 a mile east of the M5. The city is encompassed by a partial ring road (A4440) which is formed, rather inconsistently, by single and dual carriageways. The A4440 road provides a second road bridge across the Severn (Carrington Bridge) just west of the A4440-A38 junction. Carrington Bridge links the A38 from Worcester towards Gloucester with the A449 linking Worcester with Malvern.

Rail[link]

Worcester locomotive depot 14 April 1959

Worcester has two stations, Worcester Foregate Street and Worcester Shrub Hill.

Worcester Foregate Street is located in the city centre, on Foregate Street. Although featuring two tracks Foregate Street consists of two bi-directional single working lines, one of which is the Birmingham to Worcester line while the other is the Cotswold Line, which Shrub Hill also serves.

Worcester Shrub Hill is located just outside the city centre on Shrub Hill Road. The station is on the Cotswold Line as well being a spur off the Birmingham to Worcester line. Unlike Foregate Street, Shrub Hill does not have single working lines. Being the much bigger of Worcester's stations, due to a large number of tracks and sidings, Shrub Hill is often used as a stabling point and a through route for freight trains.

Both stations frequently serve Birmingham via Droitwich Spa, then either lines being firstly via Kidderminster and Stourbridge mostly Birmingham Snow Hill (with some going this way to Birmingham New Street) and Birmingham Moor Street then onwards perhaps to Warwick or secondly via Bromsgrove and University and Birmingham New Street which trains are run by London Midland.

London is also served frequently by both stations via the Cotswold Line and, infrequently, via the Birmingham-Bristol/Gloucester-Swindon/Bristol-London lines. Train services to Oxford and London Paddington are operated by First Great Western.

Although connected to the Birmingham-Bristol 'Cross Country' mainline only two miles away, Worcester is not served by Inter City Cross Country services therefore making Worcestershire the only county in England where Inter City Cross Country services pass through but do not stop in during normal scheduled timetables. The proposed station, Worcestershire Parkway is expected to end this.^{[citation needed]}

Bus[link]

The main operator of bus services in and around the city is First Midlands, while Diamond Bus Company, trading as Red Diamond, and Worcestershire County Council, trading as Woosh, operate many other services. A few other smaller operators provide services in Worcester, most notably Astons (Veolia Transport) and Bromyard Omnibus Company. The terminus and interchange for many bus services in Worcester is Crowngate Bus Station located in the city centre.

Park and ride[link]

There are two park and ride sites serving Worcester, one located off the A38 in the Perdiswell area of the city and the other located at Worcester Rugby Football Club's Sixways Stadium next to junction 6 of the M5 motorway.

Perdiswell site[link]

A direct and limited stop bus service (W1), operated by Worcestershire County Council under the Woosh name, runs every ten minutes between the Perdiswell site and the cityity centre and vice versa, between 7am and 6:45pm Monday to Saturday.

The stops on the W1 service are at: • Perdiswell Park & Ride • St Stephen’s Church (Barbourne area) • St George’s Square (Barbourne area) • Little London for Royal Grammar School (Barbourne area) • Foregate Street Rail Station (city centre) • Worcester Bus Station (city centre)

Sixways Stadium site[link]

Two circular bus services (W2 and W3), operated by Worcestershire County Council under the Woosh name, link the Sixways site to the Worcestershire Royal Hospital and the government offices on Whittington Road, Monday to Friday.

Air[link]

Worcester's nearest major airport is Birmingham International which by train is via Birmingham New Street and then on a London Euston train for 10 minutes non-stop or a stopping train slightly longer.

Assumed to be approximately 45 minutes by road via the M5 and M42 motorways.

Education[link]

Worcester is home to the University of Worcester, which was awarded university status in 2005 by HM Privy Council. From 1997 to 2005 it was known as University College Worcester (UCW) and prior to 1997 it was known as Worcester College of Higher Education. From 2005 to 2010 it was the fastest growing university in the UK, more than doubling its student population. The University is also home to the independent Worcester Students Union institution. The city is also home to two colleges, Worcester Sixth Form College and Worcester College of Technology.

High schools[link]

The High schools located in the city are Bishop Perowne CofE College, Blessed Edward Oldcorne Catholic College, Christopher Whitehead Language College, Tudor Grange Academy Worcester (on the site of the defunct Elgar High School), Nunnery Wood High School and New College Worcester which caters for blind and partially sighted students from the ages of 11 to 18.

Independent schools[link]

Worcester is also the seat of three independent schools. The Royal Grammar School, founded in 1291, and Alice Ottley School merged in 2007. The King's School, Worcester was re-founded in 1541 under King Henry VIII. Saint Mary's Convent School, now the only all-girls school in the city, is the third private school in the city. Other independent schools include the Independent Christian school, the River School in Fernhill Heath.

Sport[link]

Entrance to the Worcester King George's Field.

• Worcester Warriors, an Aviva Premiership Rugby Union team who play at Sixways Stadium.
• Worcestershire County Cricket Club whose home ground is New Road.
• Blue Square Conference South side Worcester City F.C. who play at St George's Lane.
• Worcester St Johns Cycling Club
• Worcester Wolves, a professional basketball team in the British Basketball League.
• Worcester Racecourse is on an open area known as "Pitchcroft" on the east bank of the River Severn.
• Worcester has King George's Field in memorial to King George V.
• Worcester Rowing Club which is situated near the city centre on the River Severn.
• University of Worcester Rowing Club which shares accommodation with Worcester Rowing Club.
• University of Birmingham Rowing Club
• Worcester Athletics Club who meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays at Nunnery Wood Sports Centre
• Worcester University Climbing and Mountaineering Club

Culture[link]

Festivals and shows[link]

Every three years Worcester becomes home to the Three Choirs Festival, which dates from the eighteenth century and is credited with being the oldest music festival in Europe. The location of the festival rotates each year between the Cathedral Cities of the Three Counties, Gloucester, Hereford and Worcester. Famous for its championing of English music, especially that of Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst, Worcester last hosted the festival in August 2011.

The Worcester Festival is a relatively new venture established in 2003. Held in late August, the festival consists of a variety of music, theatre, cinema and workshops, as well as the already established Beer Festival, which runs as an event within the Worcester Festival.

For one weekend the city plays host to the Worcester Music Festival. Now in its 4th year (2011) the festival comprises a weekend original music by predominantly local bands and musicians. All performances are free, and take place throughout the city centre in bars, clubs, community buildings, churches and the library. In 2010 the festival comprised 230 unique acts.

Worcester Festival ends with a spectacular firework display on the banks of the River Severn on the Monday of the August bank holiday.

The Victorian-themed Christmas Fayre is a major source of tourism every December. Elton John came to the Worcestershire Cricket Ground, New Road on Saturday 9 June 2006. Status Quo came to Sixways Stadium (Worcester Warriors) on Saturday 28 July 2007.

The twelfth CAMRA Worcester Beer and Cider festival took place for three days from the 17 August 2010^[26] and was held as usual on Pitchcroft Race Course.

The Worcester Beer, Cider and Perry festival is the largest beer festival within the West Midlands with the 2009 event being attended by 11,000 people.

Arts and cinema[link]

Famous 18th century actress Sarah Siddons made her acting début here at the Theatre Royal in Angel Street. Her sister, the novelist Ann Julia Kemble Hatton,^[27] otherwise known as Ann of Swansea, was born in the city. Matilda Alice Powles, better known as Vesta Tilley, a leading male impersonator and music hall artiste was born in Worcester.

In present-day Worcester the Swan Theatre^[28] stages a mixture of professional touring and local amateur productions. The Countess of Huntingdon's Hall^[28] is a historic church now used as venue for an eclectic range of musical performances, while the Marrs Bar^[29] is a venue for gigs and stand-up comedy. Worcester has two multi-screen cinemas; a Vue Cinema complex located on Friar Street, and an Odeon Cinema on Foregate Street – both of which were 3D-equipped by March 2010.

In the northern suburb of Northwick is the Art Deco Northwick Cinema. Built in 1938 it contains one of the only two remaining interiors in Britain designed by John Alexander (the original perspective drawings are still held by RIBA). It was a bingo hall from 1966 to 1982 and then empty until 1991; it was then run as a music venue until 1996, and was empty again until autumn 2006 when it became an antiques and lifestyle centre, owned by Grey's Interiors, who were previously located in the Tything.^{[citation needed]}

There are a number of other arts organisations in Worcester. Based at the university and also at Bishop Perowne C of E Performing Arts College is C&T (formerly Collar & Tie), an educational theatre company that specialises in theatre for young people tackling topical issues using a blend of drama and new media technologies.^[30]

Media[link]

Worcester is home to Worcester News, Worcester Standard and Berrow's Worcester Journal newspapers and radio stations Free Radio & BBC Hereford & Worcester.

Twinning and planned twinning[link]

Worcester is twinned with the German city of Kleve, the Parisian commune of Le Vésinet, and its larger American namesake Worcester, Massachusetts.^[31]

In February 2009 Worcester City Council's Twinning Association began deliberating an application to twin Worcester with the Palestinian city of Gaza. Councillor Alan Amos introduced the application, which was passed at its first stage by a majority of 35-6.^[32] The proposal was later rejected by the Executive Committee of the City of Worcester Twinning Association for lack of funding due to its present commitment to existing twinning projects.^[33]

Notable people[link]

Edward Elgar

• Composer Sir Edward Elgar's father ran a music shop at the end of High Street; a statue of Elgar stands near the original location of that shop. His birthplace is a short way outside Worcester in the village of Broadheath.
• Hannah Snell, famous for impersonating a man and being enlisted in the Royal Marines in the 18th century was born and brought up here.
• Sir Charles Hastings, founder of the British Medical Association lived in Worcester for most of his life. The newly built Worcestershire Royal Hospital stands in a road named in his honour.
• William Stephenson 2007 British streetluge and buttboard champion and 2009 world number three streetluger and number two buttboarder was born and lives in Worcester.
• Philip Henry Gosse, naturalist, was born in the city in 1810.
• Sir Thomas Brock, sculptor most famous for the Imperial Victoria Memorial in London was born here in 1847.
• Edward Leader Williams, designer of the Manchester Ship Canal, was born and brought up in Worcester, living at Diglis House (now the Diglis House Hotel) with his brother, noted landscape artist Benjamin Williams Leader.
• William Morris, Lord Nuffield, (founder of Morris Motors Limited and philanthropist), spent the first three years of his life in the city.
• Geoffrey Anketell Studdert Kennedy, poet and author, famously known as "Woodbine Willy", was for some time the Vicar of St. Paul's Church in the city. He rose to fame during World War I when he became an army chaplain, his sermons and poetry helping boost morale to the troops. He acquired his nickname from his habit of handing out "Woodbine" cigarettes to the men in the trenches.
• Mrs. Henry Wood writer, was born in Worcester.
• Fay Weldon writer, was born in Worcester.
• Revd Thomas Davis, hymn-writer, was born in Worcester in 1804. He is an ancestor of the Duchess of Cambridge.
• Worcester was home to electronic music producer and collaborator Mike Paradinas and his record label Planet Mu, until the label moved to London in 2007.
• Dave Mason musician, singer, songwriter and guitarist, was born in Worcester.
• Andrew Hung and Benjamin John Power of experimental music group Fuck Buttons were both brought up in Worcester.
• Ernest Payne was born in Worcester and rode for the local Worcester St Johns Cycling Club. He won a gold medal in the team pursuit at the 1908 Summer Olympics in London.
• Sheila Scott, aviatrix
• James White (1775–1820), founder of the first advertising agency in 1800 in London, was born in Worcester.
• Ann Hatton, writer of the Kemble family was born in Worcester.

See also People from Worcester.

See also[link]

• List of Bishops of Worcester
• Worcester Cathedral
• Worcester City Art Gallery & Museum
• Worcester Porcelain Museum

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikisource has the text of a 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article about Worcester.

• Worcester City Council
• Worcester at the Open Directory Project

v t e Districts of the West Midlands Region Herefordshire Herefordshire Shropshire Shropshire Telford and Wrekin Staffordshire Cannock Chase East Staffordshire Lichfield Newcastle-under-Lyme South Staffordshire Stafford Staffordshire Moorlands Stoke-on-Trent Tamworth Warwickshire North Warwickshire Nuneaton and Bedworth Rugby Stratford-on-Avon Warwick West Midlands Birmingham Coventry Dudley Sandwell Solihull Walsall Wolverhampton Worcestershire Bromsgrove Malvern Hills Redditch Worcester Wychavon Wyre Forest

Henry Balfour Gardiner (7 November 1877 – 28 June 1950) was an English musician, composer, and teacher.

Between his conventional education at Charterhouse School and New College, Oxford, where he obtained only a pass degree, Gardiner was a piano student at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt am Main, where he was taught by Iwan Knorr and Lazzaro Uzielli, who had been a pupil of Clara Schumann. He belonged to the Frankfurt Group, a circle of composers who studied at the Hoch Conservatory in the late 1890s. Gardiner collected folk songs in Hampshire (1905-1906),^[1], taught music briefly at Winchester College (1907), and composed. His works included compositions in a variety of genres, including two symphonies, but many of his scores are lost and only a very limited amount of his music survives.

His best-known work Evening Hymn (1908), a setting of the Compline hymn Te lucis ante terminum, is a lush, romantic work for eight-part choir and organ, of dense harmonies. For most of the time, it sits in four parts, though the treble, alto, tenor, and bass parts all subdivide at various points. It is considered a classic of the English choral repertoire and is still regularly performed as an anthem at evensong in Anglican churches.

The fame of this work has overshadowed his surviving orchestral works, which include Overture to a Comedy and the Delius-like A Berkshire Idyll.

Gardiner's most important work, arguably, was his promotion as a conductor of contemporary British and colonial composers, notably in a series of concerts at Queen's Hall London in 1912-1913. The composers represented included Arnold Bax, Frederic Austin, Gustav Holst, Percy Grainger, Roger Quilter, Cyril Scott and Norman O'Neill. (The last four had also studied with him at Frankfurt.) He financed these concerts himself; he continued to be notably generous with his personal fortune, paying for a private benefit performance of The Planets for Gustav Holst in 1918, and purchasing Frederick Delius's house at Grez-sur-Loing to enable him to continue living in it at the end of his life.

Gardiner gave up composing in 1925 largely because he was intensely self-critical: much of his lost music was probably destroyed by him. Thereafter, he devoted himself to a pioneering afforestation programme on his Dorset farm.

He died in 1950, aged 72. He was the great-uncle of the conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner.

References[link]

• Stephen Banfield with Stephen Lloyd New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians 1980, rep 1994, vol 7, 163
• Cyril Scott, 'The late Balfour Gardiner and our Student Days', Music Teacher xxix (1950) 396

Notes[link]

G. K. Chesterton
Born	Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-05-29)29 May 1874 Kensington, London, England
Died	14 June 1936(1936-06-14) (aged 62) Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, England
Occupation	Journalist, Novelist, Essayist
Genres	Fantasy, Christian apologetics, Catholic apologetics, Mystery, Poetry
Influences Christianity, Catholicism, St. Thomas Aquinas, George MacDonald, William Blake, Charles Dickens, Robert Browning, Robert Louis Stevenson, Hilaire Belloc
Influenced C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Franz Kafka, G. B. Shaw, Marshall McLuhan, Dorothy L. Sayers, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Jorge Luis Borges, David Dark, Gabriel García Márquez, Karel Čapek, Ernest Hemingway, Agatha Christie, Ronald Knox, Anthony Burgess, E. F. Schumacher, Orson Welles, Dorothy Day, Brian McLaren, R. A. Lafferty, Philip Yancey, Rich Mullins, Terry Pratchett, J. K. Rowling, Neil Gaiman, Gene Wolfe, Alan Watts, Don Miller, Garry Wills, Susanna Clarke, Carl Amery, Hannah Arendt, Slavoj Žižek, Aka Morchiladze

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, KC*SG (29 May 1874 – 14 June 1936) was an English writer.^[1] He published works on philosophy, ontology, poetry, plays, journalism, public lectures and debates, literary and art criticism, biography, Christian apologetics, and fiction, including fantasy and detective fiction. Chesterton has been called the "prince of paradox".^[2] Time magazine, in a review of a biography of Chesterton, observed of his writing style: "Whenever possible Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs, allegories—first carefully turning them inside out."^[3] For example, Chesterton wrote "Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it."^[4]

Chesterton is well known for his reasoned apologetics and even some of those who disagree with him have recognized the universal appeal of such works as Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man.^[3][5] Chesterton, as a political thinker, cast aspersions on both progressivism and conservatism, saying, "The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected."^[6] Chesterton routinely referred to himself as an "orthodox" Christian, and came to identify such a position more and more with Catholicism, eventually converting to Roman Catholicism from High Church Anglicanism. George Bernard Shaw, Chesterton's "friendly enemy" according to Time, said of him, "He was a man of colossal genius".^[3] Biographers have identified him as a successor to such Victorian authors as Matthew Arnold, Thomas Carlyle, John Henry Cardinal Newman, and John Ruskin.^[7]

Life[link]

Chesterton at the time of his engagement, 1898

Born in Campden Hill in Kensington, London, Chesterton was educated at St Paul's School. He attended the Slade School of Art in order to become an illustrator and also took literature classes at University College London but did not complete a degree at either. In 1896 Chesterton began working for the London publisher Redway, and T. Fisher Unwin, where he remained until 1902. During this period he also undertook his first journalistic work as a freelance art and literary critic. In 1901 he married Frances Blogg, to whom he remained married for the rest of his life. In 1902 he was given a weekly opinion column in the Daily News, followed in 1905 by a weekly column in The Illustrated London News, for which he would continue to write for the next thirty years.

According to Chesterton, as a young man he became fascinated with the occult and, along with his brother Cecil, experimented with Ouija boards.^[8] However, as he grew older, he became an increasingly orthodox Christian, culminating in his conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1922.^[9]

Chesterton early showed a great interest and talent in art. He had planned to become an artist and his writing shows a vision that clothed abstract ideas in concrete and memorable images. Even his fiction seemed to be carefully concealed parables. Father Brown is perpetually correcting the incorrect vision of the bewildered folks at the scene of the crime and wandering off at the end with the criminal to exercise his priestly role of recognition and repentance. For example, in the story "The Flying Stars", Father Brown entreats the character Flambeau to give up his life of crime: "There is still youth and honour and humour in you; don't fancy they will last in that trade. Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil. That road goes down and down. The kind man drinks and turns cruel; the frank man kills and lies about it. Many a man I've known started like you to be an honest outlaw, a merry robber of the rich, and ended stamped into slime."^[10]

Chesterton was a large man, standing 6 feet 4 inches (1.93 m) and weighing around 21 stone (130 kg; 290 lb). His girth gave rise to a famous anecdote. During World War I a lady in London asked why he was not 'out at the Front'; he replied, 'If you go round to the side, you will see that I am.'^[11] On another occasion he remarked to his friend George Bernard Shaw: "To look at you, anyone would think a famine had struck England". Shaw retorted, "To look at you, anyone would think you have caused it".^[12] P. G. Wodehouse once described a very loud crash as "a sound like Chesterton falling onto a sheet of tin."^[13]

Chesterton usually wore a cape and a crumpled hat, with a swordstick in hand, and a cigar hanging out of his mouth. Chesterton had a tendency to forget where he was supposed to be going and miss the train that was supposed to take him there. It is reported that on several occasions he sent a telegram to his wife Frances from some distant (and incorrect) location, writing such things as "Am in Market Harborough. Where ought I to be?" to which she would reply, "Home."^[14] As a result of these memory problems and of Chesterton being extremely clumsy as a child, there has been speculation that Chesterton had undiagnosed developmental dyspraxia.^{[15][citation needed]}

Chesterton loved to debate, often engaging in friendly public disputes with such men as George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Bertrand Russell and Clarence Darrow. According to his autobiography, he and Shaw played cowboys in a silent movie that was never released.

Death[link]

Chesterton died of congestive heart failure on the morning of 14 June 1936, at his home in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire. His last known words were a greeting spoken to his wife. The homily at Chesterton's Requiem Mass in Westminster Cathedral, London, was delivered by Ronald Knox on June 27, 1936. Knox said, "All of this generation has grown up under Chesterton's influence so completely that we do not even know when we are thinking Chesterton."^[16] He is buried in Beaconsfield in the Catholic Cemetery. Chesterton's estate was probated at £28,389, approximately equivalent to £1.3 million in 2005.

Near the end of his life he was invested by Pope Pius XI as Knight Commander with Star of the Papal Order of St. Gregory the Great (KC*SG).^[17] The Chesterton Society has proposed that he be beatified.^[18]

Writing[link]

Chesterton in 1905 by photographer Alvin Langdon Coburn

Chesterton wrote around 80 books, several hundred poems, some 200 short stories, 4000 essays, and several plays. He was a literary and social critic, historian, playwright, novelist, Catholic theologian and apologist, debater, and mystery writer. He was a columnist for the Daily News, the Illustrated London News, and his own paper, G. K.'s Weekly; he also wrote articles for the Encyclopædia Britannica, including the entry on Charles Dickens and part of the entry on Humour in the 14th edition (1929). His best-known character is the priest-detective Father Brown, who appeared only in short stories, while The Man Who Was Thursday is arguably his best-known novel. He was a convinced Christian long before he was received into the Catholic Church, and Christian themes and symbolism appear in much of his writing. In the United States, his writings on distributism were popularized through The American Review, published by Seward Collins in New York.

Of his nonfiction, Charles Dickens: A Critical Study (1906) has received some of the broadest-based praise. According to Ian Ker (The Catholic Revival in English Literature, 1845–1961, 2003), "In Chesterton's eyes Dickens belongs to Merry, not Puritan, England" ; Ker treats Chesterton's thought in Chapter 4 of that book as largely growing out of his true appreciation of Dickens, a somewhat shop-soiled property in the view of other literary opinions of the time.

Chesterton's writings consistently displayed wit and a sense of humour. He employed paradox, while making serious comments on the world, government, politics, economics, philosophy, theology and many other topics.

Views and contemporaries[link]

Self-portrait of Chesterton based on the distributist slogan "Three acres and a cow"

Chesterton's writing has been seen by some analysts as combining two earlier strands in English literature. Dickens' approach is one of these. Another is represented by Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw, whom Chesterton knew well: satirists and social commentators following in the tradition of Samuel Butler, vigorously wielding paradox as a weapon against complacent acceptance of the conventional view of things.

Chesterton's style and thinking were all his own, however, and his conclusions were often opposed to those of Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. In his book Heretics, Chesterton has this to say of Wilde: "The same lesson [of the pessimistic pleasure-seeker] was taught by the very powerful and very desolate philosophy of Oscar Wilde. It is the carpe diem religion; but the carpe diem religion is not the religion of happy people, but of very unhappy people. Great joy does not gather the rosebuds while it may; its eyes are fixed on the immortal rose which Dante saw."^[19] More briefly, and with a closer approximation of Wilde's own style, he writes in Orthodoxy concerning the necessity of making symbolic sacrifices for the gift of creation: "Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde."

Chesterton and Shaw were famous friends and enjoyed their arguments and discussions. Although rarely in agreement, they both maintained good-will toward and respect for each other. However, in his writing, Chesterton expressed himself very plainly on where they differed and why. In Heretics he writes of Shaw:

After belabouring a great many people for a great many years for being unprogressive, Mr. Shaw has discovered, with characteristic sense, that it is very doubtful whether any existing human being with two legs can be progressive at all. Having come to doubt whether humanity can be combined with progress, most people, easily pleased, would have elected to abandon progress and remain with humanity. Mr. Shaw, not being easily pleased, decides to throw over humanity with all its limitations and go in for progress for its own sake. If man, as we know him, is incapable of the philosophy of progress, Mr. Shaw asks, not for a new kind of philosophy, but for a new kind of man. It is rather as if a nurse had tried a rather bitter food for some years on a baby, and on discovering that it was not suitable, should not throw away the food and ask for a new food, but throw the baby out of window, and ask for a new baby.^[20]

Shaw represented the new school of thought, modernism, which was rising at the time. Chesterton's views, on the other hand, became increasingly more focused towards the Church. In Orthodoxy he writes: "The worship of will is the negation of will... If Mr. Bernard Shaw comes up to me and says, 'Will something', that is tantamount to saying, 'I do not mind what you will', and that is tantamount to saying, 'I have no will in the matter.' You cannot admire will in general, because the essence of will is that it is particular."^[21]

This style of argumentation is what Chesterton refers to as using 'Uncommon Sense' — that is, that the thinkers and popular philosophers of the day, though very clever, were saying things that were nonsensical. This is illustrated again in Orthodoxy: "Thus when Mr. H. G. Wells says (as he did somewhere), "All chairs are quite different", he utters not merely a misstatement, but a contradiction in terms. If all chairs were quite different, you could not call them "all chairs."^[22] Or, again from Orthodoxy:

The wild worship of lawlessness and the materialist worship of law end in the same void. Nietzsche scales staggering mountains, but he turns up ultimately in Tibet. He sits down beside Tolstoy in the land of nothing and Nirvana. They are both helpless — one because he must not grasp anything, and the other because he must not let go of anything. The Tolstoyan's will is frozen by a Buddhist instinct that all special actions are evil. But the Nietzscheite's will is quite equally frozen by his view that all special actions are good; for if all special actions are good, none of them are special. They stand at the crossroads, and one hates all the roads and the other likes all the roads. The result is — well, some things are not hard to calculate. They stand at the cross-roads.^[22]

"All healthy men, ancient and modern, Western and Eastern, hold that there is in sex a fury that we cannot afford to inflame; and that a certain mystery must attach to the instinct if it is to continue delicate and sane."^[23] In the middle of his epic poem The Ballad of the White Horse he famously states: <poem> For the great Gaels of Ireland Are the men that God made mad, For all their wars are merry, And all their songs are sad.^[24] </poem>

Another contemporary and friend from schooldays was Edmund Bentley, inventor of the clerihew. Chesterton himself wrote clerihews and illustrated his friend's first published collection of poetry, Biography for Beginners (1905), which popularized the clerihew form. Chesterton was also godfather to Bentley's son, Nicolas, and opened his novel The Man Who Was Thursday with a poem written to Bentley.

Chesterton faced accusations of anti-Semitism during his lifetime, as well as posthumously.^[25] In a work of 1917, titled “A Short History of England,” Chesterton considers the year of 1290, when by royal decree, Edward I expelled Jews from England, an edict not rescinded until 1655. In writing of the official expulsion and banishment of 1290, Chesterton writes that Edward I was “just and conscientious” a monarch never more truly representative of his people than when he expelled the Jews, “as powerful as they are unpopular.” Chesterton writes Jews were “capitalists of their age” so that when Edward “flung the alien financiers out of the land,” he acted as “knight errant,” and “tender father of his people.”^[26] In The New Jerusalem, Chesterton made it clear that he believed that there was a "Jewish Problem" in Europe, in the sense that he believed that Jewish culture (not Jewish ethnicity) separated itself from the nationalities of Europe.^[27] He suggested the formation of a Jewish homeland as a solution, and was later invited to Palestine by Jewish Zionists who saw him as an ally in their cause.

The Wiener Library (London's archive on anti-semitism and Holocaust history) has defended Chesterton against the charge of anti-Semitism: "he was not an enemy, and when the real testing time came along he showed what side he was on."^[28] Chesterton, like Belloc, openly expressed his abhorrence of Hitler's rule almost as soon as it started.^[29]

[edit] The Chesterbelloc

See Also G. K.'s Weekly.

Chesterton is often associated with his close friend, the poet and essayist Hilaire Belloc. George Bernard Shaw coined the name Chesterbelloc for their partnership, and this stuck. Though they were very different men, they shared many beliefs; Chesterton eventually joined Belloc in his natal Catholicism, and both voiced criticisms towards capitalism and socialism. They instead espoused a third way: distributism. G. K.'s Weekly, which occupied much of Chesterton's energy in the last 15 years of his life, was the successor to Belloc's New Witness, taken over from Cecil Chesterton, Gilbert's brother who died in World War I.

Literary legacy[link]

• Chesterton's The Everlasting Man contributed to C. S. Lewis's conversion to Christianity. In a letter to Sheldon Vanauken (14 December 1950)^[30] Lewis calls the book "the best popular apologetic I know", and to Rhonda Bodle he wrote (31 December 1947)^[31] "the [very] best popular defence of the full Christian position I know is G. K. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man." The book was also cited in a list of 10 books that "most shaped his vocational attitude and philosophy of life."^[32]
• Chesterton's 1906 biography of Charles Dickens was largely responsible for creating a popular revival for Dickens's work as well as a serious reconsideration of Dickens by scholars.^[33]
• Chesterton's novel The Man Who Was Thursday inspired the Irish Republican leader Michael Collins with the idea: "if you didn't seem to be hiding nobody hunted you out."^[34]
• Etienne Gilson praised Chesterton's Aquinas volume as follows: "I consider it as being, without possible comparison, the best book ever written on Saint Thomas...the few readers who have spent twenty or thirty years in studying St. Thomas Aquinas, and who, perhaps, have themselves published two or three volumes on the subject, cannot fail to perceive that the so-called 'wit' of Chesterton has put their scholarship to shame."^[35]

• Chesterton's column in the Illustrated London News on September 18, 1909 had a profound effect on Mahatma Gandhi. P. N. Furbank asserts that Gandhi was "thunderstruck" when he read it,^[36] while Martin Green notes that "Gandhi was so delighted with this that he told Indian Opinion to reprint it."^[37]

• Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, author of seventy books, identified Chesterton as the stylist who had the greatest impact on his own writing, stating in his autobiography Treasure in Clay "The greatest influence in writing was G.K. Chesterton who never used a useless word, who saw the value of a paradox, and avoided what was trite."^[38]

• Canadian Media Guru Marshall McLuhan was heavily influenced by Chesterton; McLuhan said the book What's Wrong with the World changed his life in terms of ideas and religion.^[39]
• The author Neil Gaiman has stated that The Napoleon of Notting Hill was an important influence on his own book Neverwhere, and used a quote from it as an epigraph to that novel. Gaiman also based the character Gilbert, from the comic book The Sandman, on Chesterton.^[40]
• Argentine author and essayist Jorge Luis Borges cited Chesterton as a major influence on his own fiction. In an interview with Richard Burgin during the late 1960s, Borges said, "Chesterton knew how to make the most of a detective story."^[41]

List of major works[link]

• The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904) text CSE.dmu.ac.uk
• Heretics (1905) ISBN 978-0-7661-7476-4 (Available from Project Gutenberg)
• Charles Dickens: A Critical Study (1906)
• The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) Manybooks.net
• Orthodoxy (1908) Doubleday, 1991. ISBN 978-0-385-01536-3 (Available from Project Gutenberg)
• The Ballad Of The White Horse (1911)
• Manalive (1912)
• Father Brown short stories (detective fiction)
• Eugenics and Other Evils (1922)
• Saint Francis of Assisi (1923), Doubleday, 1987. ISBN 978-0-385-02900-1
• The Everlasting Man (1925)
• Saint Thomas Aquinas (1933), Doubleday, 1974. ISBN 978-0-385-09002-5

	Poetry portal
	Saints portal

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Ahlquist, Dale. G. K. Chesterton: Apostle of Common Sense (2003)
• Braybrooke, Patrick, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, 1922.
• Cooney, A., G.K. Chesterton, One Sword at Least, Third Way Publications, London, 1999. ISBN 0-9535077-1-8
• Coren, M., Gilbert: The Man Who Was G. K. Chesterton, Paragon House, New York, 1990.
• ffinch, M., G. K. Chesterton, 1986
• Kenner, H., Paradox in Chesterton, 1947.
• Ker, Ian (2011), G. K. Chesterton: A Biography, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-960128-3
• Ker, Ian. G.K. Chesterton: A Biography (Oxford University Press; 2011)
• Lauer, Quentin, G.K. Chesterton: Philosopher Without Portfolio, Fordham University Press, New York City, New York, 1991 ISBN 0-8232-1199-1
• McLuhan, Marshall "G.K. Chesterton: A Practical Mystic" (Dalhousie Review 15 (4), 1936)
• McNichol, J., The Young Chesterton Chronicles, Book One: The Tripods Attack!", Sophia institute Press, Manchester, NH, 2008. ISBN 978-1-933184-26-5
• Paine, R., The Universe and Mr. Chesterton, Sherwood Sugden, 1999. ISBN 0-89385-511-1
• Pearce, J, Wisdom and Innocence – A Life of G.K.Chesterton, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1996. ISBN 0-340-67132-7
• Sullivan, John, "G.K. Chesterton: A Centenary Appraisal", Paul Elek, London, 1974. ISBN 0-236-17628-5
• Ward, M., Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Sheed & Ward, 1944.
• Williams, Donald T. Mere Humanity: G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, and J. R. R. Tolkien on the Human Condition (2006)

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: G. K. Chesterton

Wikisource has original works written by or about: G. K. Chesterton

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: G. K. Chesterton

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Chesterton, Gilbert Keith.

• Portraits of G. K. Chesterton in the National Portrait Gallery (London). Retrieved 2010-10-28
• Archival material relating to G. K. Chesterton listed at the UK National Register of Archives
• The American Chesterton Society. Retrieved 2010-10-28
• Gilbert Magazine, a Chesterton journal. Retrieved 2010-10-28
• Parish Church in Beaconsfield where Chesterton is buried. Retrieved 2010-10-28
• Iain Benson (ed), "The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton"
• G. K. Chesterton website, including etexts
• Works by G. K. Chesterton at Project Gutenberg
• Works in audio format from LibriVox. Retrieved 2010-10-28
• Works at Internet Archive. Retrieved 2010-10-28
• Works by or about G. K. Chesterton in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Works by G. K. Chesterton at Wikilivres. Retrieved 2010-10-28
• Works at the Online Books Page. Retrieved 2010-10-28