G. K. Chesterton 3 hr 34 min read

In the placid, prophecy-proof London of 1984, a whimsical king revives medieval pageantry as a joke, until one man, Adam Wayne, takes the game of Notting Hill's independence with deadly seriousness.

G. K. Chesterton's 1904 novel is a witty, prophetic dystopian and social-SF fantasy. Sharp, paradoxical, gloriously Chestertonian. Read it for a brilliant comic parable of a future England where a practical joke becomes a genuine war, and the romance of small loyalties triumphs over a grey and rational age.

In its time

Published in 1904, during the 1900s, the scientific romance.

Reading it

3 hr 34 min read (a novel-length work, settle in).

Illustrated by

W. Graham Robertson