The Napoleon of Notting Hill

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1. jawnsMay 2025
   If you're interested in a literary take on this concept, read "The Napoleon of Notting Hill" by G.K. Chesterton in 1904.

   Available on Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/20058/20058-h/20058-h.htm

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2. svieiraDec 2022
   You might like G. K. Chesterton's _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_ if you haven't already read it (neighborhood regionalism at its finest!)
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3. max-ibelDec 2022
   I recommend Roald Dahl's "Going Solo". The Audiobook narrated by Andrew Sachs is quite compelling.

   Also, maybe "The Napoleon of Notting Hill" by G.K. Chesterton.

   And of course most by P.G. Wodehouse.

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4. svieiraNov 2022
   My favorite is from _The Napoleon of Notting Hill_ by G. K. Chesterton:

   ----

   "Poet, whose cunning carved this amorous shell, \ Where twain may dwell."

   "The peculiarity of these fine though feminine lines," continued "Thunderbolt," "is, as we have said, that they praise the hansom cab by comparing it to the shell, to a natural thing. Now, hear the author of 'Hymns on the Hill,' and how he deals with the same subject. In his fine nocturne, entitled 'The Last Omnibus' he relieves the rich and poignant melancholy of the theme by a sudden sense of rushing at the end—

   'The wind round the old street corner \ Swung sudden and quick as a cab.'

   "Here the distinction is obvious. 'Daisy Daydream' thinks it a great compliment to a hansom cab to be compared to one of the spiral chambers of the sea. And the author of 'Hymns on the Hill' thinks it a great compliment to the immortal whirlwind to be compared to a hackney coach. He surely is the real admirer of London. We have no space to speak of all his perfect applications of the idea; of the poem in which, for instance, a lady's eyes are compared, not to stars, but to two perfect street-lamps guiding the wanderer. We have no space to speak of the fine lyric, recalling the Elizabethan spirit, in which the poet, instead of saying that the rose and the lily contend in her complexion, says, with a purer modernism, that the red omnibus of Hammersmith and the white omnibus of Fulham fight there for the mastery. How perfect the image of two contending omnibuses!"”

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5. jkingsberyMar 2022
   Besides ones already mentioned, a suggestion I'd like to throw out is the writings of GK Chesterton. I've heard many engineers cite "Chesterton's fence," the idea that you shouldn't get rid of something until you understand why it's there in the first place (which, naturally comes up a lot in software engineering). I haven't come across many engineers though that have actually read one of his books.

   His non-fiction books are easy to read and full of lots of wonderful turns-of-phrase. A lot of what he wrote back in the day sounds like it could be written today. There is a fair amount of his books that was very of-the-moment, making references to people from the time that I suppose were well known then that you need to read around.

   I've only read two of his fiction books (Napoleon of Notting Hill and The Man who was Thursday), both of which are really funny.

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6. lancefisherSep 2021
   In 1904, G.K. Chesterton wrote a fun novel about 1984 London where the king was chosen by lottery called The Napoleon of Notting Hill. I picked it up after the 2016 election since that seemed like such an anomaly. There are some interesting explorations of human nature, and of course you can draw parallels to modern times without too much stretching. However, I don’t think a lottery is a serious answer.
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