OVER the course of the last forty years, I have managed to collect over 130 books by Hilaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton – both new and secondhand – but was reluctantly forced to arrive at the uncomfortable conclusion that the former owners of my Bellocian texts are far less diligent than their Chestertonian counterparts.

In fact people who read Belloc are more likely to have bad handwriting and blunt pencils, drink copious amounts of strong coffee, open their volumes to the extraordinary degree that the spines became irrevocably creased (something completely inexcusable, in my opinion, and punishable by death) and hurl them around like a man trying to juggle hot potatoes.

I must therefore conclude that the reasoning behind this awful state of affairs is the fact that Belloc’s dry, historical tomes – which, nonetheless, I thoroughly enjoy – seem to attract the kind of blissfully disorganised individual who lacks the more orderly and aesthetic qualities of your average Chestertonian.

Just don’t get me started on readers of Marx and Freud, at least not without appreciating the practical subtleties of industrial glove-wearing, reliable nostril-blocking techniques, having to leave one’s windows open in sub-zero temperatures and the unavoidable logistics of literary de-infestation.