Belloc is remembered in an annual celebration in Sussex, known as Belloc Night, that takes place on the writer’s birthday, 27 July, in the manner of Burns Night in Scotland. The celebration includes reading from Belloc’s work and partaking of a bread and cheese supper with pickles. ~Wikipedia, Hilaire Belloc
I think Mr. Belloc was incredibly prescient at times. For example apply the following insight to the present-day political situation in the United States:
In a word, the Barbarian is discoverable everywhere in this that he cannot make; that he can befog or destroy, but that he cannot sustain; and of every Barbarian in the decline or peril of every civilisation exactly that has been true.
We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid.
We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us: we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on these faces there is no smile.
Ch. XXXII : The Barbarians , p. 282
However, he could also be quite simply wrong:
I am opposed to women’s voting as men vote. I call it immoral, because I think the bringing of one’s women, one’s mothers and sisters, into the political arena, disturbs the relations between the sexes.
Often, he was funny:
When I am dead, I hope it may be said: “His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.
The Llama is a woolly sort of fleecy hairy goat, with an indolent expression and an undulating throat; like an unsuccessful literary man.
Then, sometimes he is just homely and lovely:
If I ever become a rich man,
Or if ever I grow to be old,
I will build a house with deep thatch
To shelter me from the cold,
And there shall the Sussex songs be sung
And the story of Sussex told.I will hold my house in the high wood
Within a walk of the sea,
And the men that were boys when I was a boy
Shall sit and drink with me.
Is Belloc Night still a yearly happening , as love to come in 2024 with a friend who is descended from him .