‘Five yards East of this stone lies the body of Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953), for 28 years a member of the congregation of this Church of Our Lady of Consolation, in whose memory this tower and spire were completed in 1964 in grateful recognition of his zealous and unwavering profession of our Holy faith which he defended in his writing and noble verse. “This is the Faith that I have and hold and This is That in which i mean to die.”‘ Joseph Hilaire Pierre Rene Belloc was born in La Celle Saint Cloud, twelve miles outside Paris, two days after the Pope declared himself to be infallible and two days before the Franco-Prussian War broke out. His father, Louis Belloc, was a barrister, half-French and half-Irish ; his mother, Bessie Rayner Parkes, was from Birmingham in England, the granddaughter of Joseph Priestley. Their elder daughter, Marie, went on to write “The Lodger”, later to be filmed by Hitchcock. Louis Belloc died in 1872 and the family moved to England, where Hilaire was educated at the Oratory School in Birmingham, under Cardinal Newman, and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he became President of the Union and hoped , but failed, to become the first Catholic Don since the Reformation ; this disappointment was to dog him all his life. His scholastic career was interrupted by his travels in America and his service in the French Artillery. After graduation, he married an Irish-American girl called Elodie Hogan (q.v.) and, in 1901, became a naturalised British subject. From 1906 to 1910, he served as the Liberal Member of Parliament for South Salford, near Manchester. Also in 1906, he bought, for £900, the King’s Land Estate in Shipley, Sussex, including a house, five acres, and a windmill. He was the author of over one hundred books, including novels, tales of his travels, and biographies of Cromwell, Richelieu, and Danton, but is best remembered for “The Bad Child’s Book of Beasts” and “Cautionary Tales”. Of his five children, Louis was killed in the First World War, and Peter (q.v.) in the Second. In 1942, Belloc suffered a severe stroke, which forced him to abandon his writing career. He lived, in increasing senility, for another eleven years until, on July 12th. 1953, he bent down to replace a coal which had fallen out of the fire, and he tumbled into the grate. His burns were not extensive, but the shock proved too much. He was taken to Mount Alvernia Nursing Home in Guildford where, four days later, he died. (bio by: Iain MacFarlaine)  Family links:  Parents:  Bessie Rayner Parkes Belloc (1829 – 1925)  Spouse:  Elodie Agnes Belloc (1868 – 1914)*  Children:  Eleanor Belloc Jebb (____ – 1979)*  Louis Belloc (____ – 1918)*  Peter Gilbert Belloc (1904 – 1941)* *Calculated relationshipCause of death: Died of shock following burns