This book examines adaptations of G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown stories in film, radio and television. Part One covers adaptations prior to 2013, including portrayals by Alec Guinness, Kenneth More, and others, as well as German and Italian versions. Part Two focuses on the BBC series Father Brown, launched in 2013 with Mark Williams starring in the title role. It provides information about the series' creation and production along with a helpful episode guide, and it analyzes critical and audience responses to the show.

G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown may seem a pleasantly doddering Roman Catholic priest, but appearances deceive. With keen observation and an unerring sense of man’s frailties–gained during his years listening to confessions–Father Brown succeeds in bringing even the most elusive criminals to justice. This definitive collection of fifteen stories, selected by the American Chesterton Society, includes such classics as “The Blue Cross,” “The Secret Garden,” and “The Paradise of Thieves.” As P. D. James writes in her Introduction, “We read the Father Brown stories for a variety pleasures, including their ingenuity, their wit and intelligence, and for the brilliance of the writing. But they provide more. Chesterton was concerned with the greatest of all problems, the vagaries of the human heart.”

Beloved clerical sleuth in roster of remarkable cases: "The Blue Cross," "The Sins of Prince Saradine," "The Sign of the Broken Sword," "The Man in the Passage," "The Perishing of the Pendragons," more.

This book examines adaptations of G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown stories in film, radio and television. Part One covers adaptations prior to 2013, including portrayals by Alec Guinness, Kenneth More, and others, as well as German and Italian versions. Part Two focuses on the BBC series Father Brown, launched in 2013 with Mark Williams starring in the title role. It provides information about the series' creation and production along with a helpful episode guide, and it analyzes critical and audience responses to the show.

The complete adventures of the well-loved clerical sleuth, collected in one brilliant volume. Shabby and lumbering, with a face like a Norfolk dumpling, Father Brown makes for an improbable super-sleuth. But his innocence is the secret of his success: refusing the scientific method of detection, he adopts instead an approach of simple sympathy, interpreting each crime as a work of art, and each criminal as a man no worse than himself. This complete edition brings together all of the Father Brown stories, including two not previously available in Penguin: 'The Donnington Affair', in which Chesterton rises to the challenge of solving a murder-mystery half written by someone else (Max Pemberton), and 'The Mask of Midas', which was found in Chesterton's papers after his death. It also includes an introduction and notes by Michael D. Hurley. G.K. Chesteron was born in 1874. He attended the Slade School of Art, where he appears to have suffered a nervous breakdown, before turning his hand to journalism. A prolific writer throughout his life, his best-known books include The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904), The Man Who Knew Too Much(1922), The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) and the Father Brown stories. Chesterton converted to Roman Catholicism in 1922 and died in 1938. Michael D. Hurley is a Lecturer in English at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of St Catharine's College. He has written widely on English literature from the nineteenth century to the present day, with an emphasis on poetry and poetics. His book on G. K. Chesterton was published in 2011.

Father Brown is a fictional detective created by G. K. Chesterton. To be exact, he is called Father J. Brown, though we are never told what the initial stands for, and is originally presented as the parish priest of Cobhole in Essex, though he is found in parishes as far afield as Italy and South America. In appearance he is undistinguished, small and dumpy, short-sighted and not particularly intelligent; dressed in shabby clerical black, and carrying an umbrella as dumpy and shabby as himself.The Father Brown mysteries generally appeared first as independent short stories in various magazines; (most of) the stories were eventually collected in a series of five books:The Innocence of Father Brown (1911)The Wisdom of Father Brown (1914)The Incredulity of Father Brown (1926)The Secret of Father Brown (1927), andThe Scandal of Father Brown (1935).Three stories, "The Donnington Affair" (1914) (GKC writing the solution of a mystery set up by Max Pemberton), "The Vampire of the Village" (1936), and "The Mask of Midas" (1936), were published separately, though the second of these was later included in editions of Scandal.

In this fifth and final set of Father Brown mysteries G K Chesterton's short, shabby priest continues, in his humorous, effortless but powerfully effective way to solve a wide range of high crimes and misdemeanours.