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To his dying day (1953) Belloc never understood why Oxford's All Souls had refused to make him a Fellow, why editors were reluctant to put him on their staff, why people thought him biased, why Catholics were upset by his behavior, why Englishmen thought him un-English. Author Speaight's book tells the reasons why frankly and fully, but without ever belittling the genius of the man best remembered for his verse who wrote so prophetically in his ardent youth:
The spring's superb adventure calls
His dust athwart the woods to flame;
His boundary river's secret falls
Perpetuate and repeat his name.
He rides his loud October sky;
He does not die. He does not die.