Eighty years hence, a bored England picks its kings by lottery, and the joker who draws the throne grants Notting Hill the rights of a medieval city-state - whereupon somebody takes it seriously. Chesterton's first novel, written at thirty, and the funniest defense of small loyalties ever put in a book. Michael Collins carried a copy in Ireland. Forty-seven plates of Napoleonic falls and Paris boulevards, from Gillray to Hummel, set the comic empire beside the empire it mocks.