Ideology of Obsession: A.K.Chesterton and British Fascism

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Arthur Kenneth Chesterton, cousin of G.K. Chesterton, grew up in South Africa where he developed his "colonial outsider" view of England and of the First World War. By the age of 21, Chesterton was an archetypal "angry young man" - ex-colonial, ex-officer with literary interests and accomplishments. As an increasingly disillusioned literary critic and newspaper editor, he created a world based on his reading of English literature - an idealized version of British society. The result was a cultural despair which sealed his acceptance of fascism in 1933. In this biography, David Baker examines the socio-psychological profile of A.K. Chesterton to help explain the nature of fascism. The author questions previous academic interpretations, suggesting that a definition of fascist ideology must be broadened to take account of its fatal attraction to those who might have remained self-assured members of a democratic society.

Author Bio

David Baker researched and taught in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick as Associate Professor of Politics, researching the Conservative Party and Europe and the political economy of fascism until his retirement in 2006. He was previously Lecturer at Sheffield and Reader at Nottingham universities. Living in Bath, he continues to study political economy and political ideologies. His most recent publication with Professor Pauline Schnapper (Sorbonne) is Britain and the Crisis of the European Union (2015).