
Path to Rome by Hilaire Belloc
If you should ask how this book came to be written, it was in this way. One day as I was wandering over the world I came upon the valley where I was born, and stopping there a moment to speak with them all--when I had argued politics with the grocer, and played the great lord with the notary-public, and had all but made the carpenter a Christian by force of rhetoric--what should I note (after so many years) but the old tumble-down and gaping church, that I love more than mother-church herself, all scraped, white, rebuilt, noble, and new, as though it had been finished yesterday. Knowing very well that such a change had not come from the skinflint populace, but was the work of some just artist who knew how grand an ornament was this shrine (built there before our people stormed Jerusalem), I entered, and there saw that all within was as new, accurate, and excellent as the outer part; and this pleased me as much as though a fortune had been left to us all; for one's native place is the shell of one's soul, and one's church is the kernel of that nut.
During the early twentieth century, he was one of England's most prolific writers. He was a poet, orator, sailor, satirist, man of literature, soldier, and political activist, among other things. His writings were heavily influenced by his Catholic religion. From 1906 to 1910, he was President of the Oxford Union and then MP for Salford.
He was a well-known squabbler who had a number of long-running quarrels, yet he was also well recognized as a compassionate and sensitive man. Belloc retained his French citizenship after becoming a naturalised British person in 1902.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780140095302 |
| ISBN 10 | 0140095306 |
| Title | Path to Rome |
| Author | Hilaire Belloc |
| Series | Travel Library |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Penguin Books Ltd |
| Year published | 1985-01-03 |
| Number of pages | 240 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |