The Napoleon Of Notting Hill

The Napoleon of Notting Hill is G. K. Chesterton's first novel. Published in 1904, it is set at the end of the twentieth century. London is still a city of gas lamps and horse-drawn vehicles, but democratic government has withered away, and a representative ordinary citizen is simply chosen from a list to be king. Auberon Quin, a government clerk, something of an aesthete and even more of a joker, becomes king. Purely for his own entertainment he transforms the boroughs of London into medieval city states, with heraldic coats of arms and colourfully uniformed guards, governed by provosts in splendid robes. Then he encounters Adam Wayne, the dedicated young Provost of Notting Hill, who takes Quin's ideas more seriously than the king himself. When the other boroughs try to force a new road through Notting Hill, Wayne, convinced that small is beautiful, fights to defend his territory. Chesterton enacts arguments about the nature of human loyalties that are still current, glorifying the little man, while attacking big business and the monolithic state.

"The little man, whose name was Auberon Quin, had an appearance compounded of a baby and an owl. His round head, round eyes, seemed to have been designed by nature playfully with a pair of compasses. When he entered a room of strangers, they mistook him for a small boy, and they wanted to take him on their knees, until he spoke -- when they perceived that a boy would have been more intelligent "

This is London, England -- yet a London, England, of a distant future when a great cosmopolitan civilization has taken control of the world -- and all is ruled by the King.

Strangely, though, each new King of England is chosen from an official rotating list And who is to be next?

G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936), author of poetry, history and plays, began his career as a novelist with this 1904 extrapolation into a future London -- a gray, regulated, repetitious London . . . into which an element of surprise has quietly appeared, threatening to alter everything for good -- or ill.