“The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.” — G.K. Chesterton
There is a kind of patriotism that shouts—and another that remembers.
This episode begins not with a map, but with a voice. A remarkable Old-Time Radio anthology, This England, gathers the great poets of a civilization and lets them speak again—William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth, John Keats, Rudyard Kipling, Hilaire Belloc, and above all, G. K. Chesterton.
What emerges is not merely a collection of verses, but something far stranger and more enduring: a portrait of England as it lives in memory, landscape, sacrifice, and song.
In this Chesterton Radio deep dive, we ask a simple but unsettling question—
is England a place… or an idea?
Episode Overview
The real meaning of St. George’s Day (it’s not what you think)
How England’s greatest poets form a single voice across centuries
Why Chesterton may be the key to understanding them all
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