Well-written and engaging, Chesterton's anti-Wellsian future has kings selected by lottery ruling over a country devoid of vigour. When one of the last eccentrics finds himself on the throne he whimsically creates colourful city-states out of the districts of London. Their enforced mock-medievalism and pageantry are all very well, but one idealist takes the rhetoric to heart and sets out against the odds to create a modern Athens in the back streets of Notting Hill.
(Clive Yelf - bwl 39 April 2007 ) |
