G.K. Chesterton, born Gilbert Keith Chesterton on May 29, 1874, in Kensington, London, was a towering figure of early 20th century British literature. He was renowned for his paradoxical thought, witticisms, and rotund physical presence. A prolific writer and journalist, Chesterton contributed significantly to the realms of fiction, criticism, and Christian apologetics. His body of work encompasses a wide range of genres, including detective fiction, most notably the Father Brown stories, as well as a substantial corpus of essays, poetry, and several novels. 'Heretics' (1905), one of Chesterton's seminal works, is a series of essays in which he critiqued contemporary figures of his time and expounded on the dangers of modern philosophies that, to him, undermined traditional Christian values. His literary style, characterized by a playful use of paradox and a love for the common man, was both a defense of orthodoxy and an attack on the dogmatic skepticism of his contemporaries. Renowned for his debates with his friend and literary adversary George Bernard Shaw as well as with H.G. Wells, Chesterton's acumen did not go unnoticed, and his works remain a staple in the canon of Christian literature. He passed away on June 14, 1936, but left an indelible mark on 20th-century letters.