Hilaire Belloc

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) was a French-born British writer known for his prolific work as a poet, essayist, historian, and political commentator. Born in La Celle-Saint-Cloud, France, he later became a British subject and built a wide-ranging literary career in England. Belloc wrote verse, travel writing, and popular histories, and he was also active in public life as a Member of Parliament. A prominent Catholic voice in early twentieth-century debates, he helped articulate Catholic social thought and is closely associated with Distributism, advocating a broad distribution of property as an alternative to both capitalism and socialism. He died in 1953.