William Cobbett was one man, but his impact on the English society of his day was equivalent to that of a movement. Former and current biographers have portrayed him as a political journalist or rabble-rouser whose relevance was to his day alone. Chesterton, on the other hand, puts paid to that notion, and does so succinctly. He shows that Cobbett was more than a political journalist: he was, rather, a man with a vision of restoring to its rightful place of prominence and centrality the rural aspects of English life and culture. This was a vision, moreover, that Cobbett attempted to follow in his daily life, and not merely sketch out for some uncertain future. As such, he was what might be called a genuine rural reformer. Second, Chesterton shows that Cobbett had far wider interests than just journalism, and he goes on to look at some of the main aspects of Cobbett’s life which have been skimmed over by too many academics lacking perspective and intuition. Finally, Chesterton’s work demonstrates the continuity between the concerns of Cobbett and his day and those of Chesterton and his. Indeed, it feels almost at times as if the two could well have been the same man, living and writing in two different ages. Both the subject of the biography, in fact, and its author received much the same public reception calumny, abuse, and accusations of irrelevancy from powerful figures, contrasted with gratitude and support from those whose lives were being crushed out by modernist forces. And yet their names both live on, frequently in the same breath.