Things I didn't know about Chesterton

I've never read much about GK Chesterton:  I did start one of his Christian apologetics books once but gave up, finding the writing style too much hard work.   (From memory, it was a bit like Joseph Conrad writing non-fiction.)   

There's a long review of a book about him here which makes me glad I haven't bothered too much about his biographic details, as his life seems to have involved an awful lot of political intrigue which seems rather arcane from this distance in time.  (By which I mean, you have to have a pretty detailed understanding of early 20th century British politics to follow it fully.)  

Anyway, I did learn a few things which are odd and noteworthy:

Sex was not an obvious temptation either. Despite the restrictions she put on his wallet and on his waistline, G.K. adored his sober, dutiful, unshowy Frances, and was content to be mothered in his incompetence. But no children came, and Chesterton’s sister-in-law, Ada – she married his younger brother, Cecil – later claimed the wedding night had been so ghastly for Frances that their marriage had remained sexless. This might not be true: Ada had long nursed a grudge against Frances for taking G.K. out of the sharp-witted, boastful and heavy-drinking coterie of Fleet Street pals, where she had met the Chestertons, and off to sober Beaconsfield. 

[To be fair:  I see from a paper written for the Australian Chesterton Society, that there is this apparent explanation for their childlessness: 

The first eight years of their marriage they tried to conceive. Frances underwent an operation. Then a second. Then a third. There are no medical records as far as what exactly these operations were. After the third, the doctor sadly informed Gilbert and Frances that it was unlikely they would have any biological children.

The source for that is not given, however.]

He had a younger brother, Cecil, who apparently was a very unlikeable fellow:

Ada, writing in 1941, leaves this without comment, as ungainsayable evidence that Cecil was ‘the most brilliant debater of his time’. As a child, she adds, he kept pet cockroaches and stacks of copybooks ‘containing juvenile novels and political theses and economic systems – the outlines of a Cecilian form of government, which covered every phase of national life’.

Unpopular at school, Cecil would monopolise conversations with his ‘contradictory temperament and an extraordinary belief in his own ability’, his fellow journalist Frank Harris remembered. It could not have been easy being the little brother of someone so famous and well-loved, but Cecil was convinced he’d been overlooked: Leonard Woolf noted the streak of ‘fanatical intolerance’ nourished by a ‘grudge against the universe, the world and you in particular’.

I didn't realise he only became a Catholic in 1922, at the age of 48.  He died aged 62.   

Also, and this is not from the book review, but Wikipedia:  I knew he was rotund, but didn't realise he was also extremely tall:  6 foot 4.  

An odd character all around.