G.K.切斯特頓/G.K.Chesterton
G.K.切斯特頓（G.K.Chesterton，1874—1936），英國作家。出生於倫敦一個小資產階級家庭。在校期間，喜歡寫詩，並獲得彌爾頓獎金。1900年，切斯特頓的第一部詩集《野騎士》出版。後來還出版了《新詩集》（1929），詩意清新雋永，其中以《飛的旅舍》（1914）的《祝酒歌》最為著名。另外，偵探小說集《布朗神父的純樸》（1911）、《布朗神父的智慧》（1914）、《布朗神父的秘密》（1927）、《布朗神父的醜行》（1935）等，也深受讀者歡迎。
Aristide Valentin, Chief of the Paris Police, was late for his dinner, and some of his guests began to arrive before him. These were, however, reassured by his confdential servant, Ivan, the old man with a scar, and a face almost as grey as his moustaches, who always sat at a table in the entrance hall-a hall hung with weapons. Valentins house was perhaps as peculiar and celebrated as its master. It was an old house, with high walls and tall poplars almost overhanging the Seine；but the oddity-and perhaps the police value of its architecture was this：that there was no ultimate exit at all except through this front door, which was guarded by Ivan and the armoury. The garden was large and elaborate, and there were many exits from the house into the garden. But there was no exit from the garden into the world outside；all round it ran a tall, smooth, unscalable wall with special spikes at the top；no bad garden, perhaps, for a man to refect in whom some hundred criminals had sworn to kill.
As Ivan explained to the guests, their host had telephoned that he was detained for ten minutes. He was, in truth, making some last arrangements about executions and such ugly things；and though these duties were rootedly repulsive to him, he always performed them with precision. Ruthless in the pursuit of criminals, he was very mild about their punishment. Since he had been supreme over French-and largely over European-policial methods, his great infuence had been honourably used for the mitigation of sentences and the purifcation of prisons. He was one of the great humanitarian French freethinkers；and the only thing wrong with them is that they make mercy even colder than justice.