
Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) was one of the most respected men of his day for his learning, insight, wit, and brilliant literary style. Author of over a hundred books and articles, Belloc was a journalist, polemicist, social and political analyst, literary critic, poet, and novelist.
The Servile State has endured as his most important political work. The effect of socialist doctrine on capitalist society, Belloc wrote, is to produce a third thing different from either―the servile state, today commonly called the welfare state.
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1870–1953
Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc was born in La Celle-Saint-Cloud, France, the son of a French father, who was an attorney, and an English mother, who was an author. In 1872, his father died in 1872, leaving the family destitute, and his mother moved with Belloc to Slindon, West Sussex, where he spent most of his childhood. He was educated at John Henry Newman's Oratory School in Edgbaston, Birmingham, and then volunteered to serve in the French Army. He was posted in an artillery regiment near Toul in 1891. After his release from the military, he studied history at Oxford University, graduating in 1895. In 1896, he married Elodie Hogan, an American, and published his first book, a book of poetry called Verses and Sonnets. In 1906 he and his family moved to Shipley, West Sussex, where he lived until just before he died. He went into politics, and was a Liberal Party Member of Parliament for Salford South from 1906-1910. In 1914, the year his wife Elodie died of influenza, he took a position as edited of the war journal Land and Water, where he stayed until 1920. In 1918, his son Louis was killed while serving in the Royal Flying Corps in France. Belloc suffered a stroke in 1941, from which he never recovered.
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