The Green Overcoat: Restored Classics to Go Edition
Aug 2026 · Otbebookpublishing
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231
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About this ebook
In Hilaire Belloc's wickedly playful The Green Overcoat, a shabby piece of clothing becomes the trigger for a chain of comic disaster, philosophical absurdity, and social scandal. Professor Higginson, a shy and respectable psychologist, is lured from a rain-soaked party by temptation, only to find himself drawn into a world where gentlemanly manners conceal menace and every practical choice has grotesque consequences. After slipping on the wrong coat, he is bundled into a taxi, abducted by the polished and unnerving Jimmy and Melba, and marched into a bleak house for a formalized extortion. Their cool, educated brutality turns ransom into a farcical negotiation, complete with signatures, cheques, and inflated demands. From there the story veers further into satire as Higginson's strange encounter with the Reverend Charles and a sensational reporter transforms private embarrassment into public "proof" of life after death. Soon he is besieged by headlines, sermons, and letters from the curious, the eminent, and the credulous alike. As fame swells into absurdity, his practical friend Babcock arrives to impose order on the chaos, sorting the flood of correspondence with brisk comic sense. Belloc's novel is a sharp, darkly funny satire of publicity, vanity, and the human appetite for revelation. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.
In Hilaire Belloc's wickedly playful The Green Overcoat, a shabby piece of clothing becomes the trigger for a chain of comic disaster, philosophical absurdity, and social scandal. Professor Higginson, a shy and respectable psychologist, is lured from a rain-soaked party by temptation, only to fin...
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About the author
Hilaire Belloc was a remarkably versatile Anglo-French writer, historian, poet, essayist, and public intellectual whose life bridged two cultures and two centuries. Born in France and educated in England, he developed early the sharp wit, combative intelligence, and deep historical sense that would shape a long career devoted to defending the Catholic imagination, questioning modern orthodoxies, and making history feel vividly alive. Over the years he became one of the most distinctive voices of his time, producing a wide range of work that included history, biography, travel writing, poetry, political commentary, and religious reflection, all marked by clarity, force, and an unmistakable personal conviction. His writing often returned to the enduring tensions between faith and secular modernity, the moral lessons of history, the dignity of ordinary life, and the dangers of forgetting the past. Belloc remains relevant today because he wrote with unusual urgency about the cultural roots of Europe, the fragility of civilization, and the need for intellectual independence in an age of slogans and simplifications. He is especially significant for readers interested in Catholic thought, historical interpretation, and prose that is both elegant and uncompromising. Those who enjoy spirited argument, humane learning, and books that challenge as well as illuminate will find Belloc especially rewarding.
Hilaire Belloc was a remarkably versatile Anglo-French writer, historian, poet, essayist, and public intellectual whose life bridged two cultures and two centuries. Born in France and educated in England, he developed early the sharp wit, combative intelligence, and deep historical sense that wou...
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