The Man Who Was Thursday

‘It is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands.’ First published in 1908 and often described as a metaphysical thriller, The Man Who Was Thursday has been a hugely influential work on popular culture, having been adapted several times for radio and the big screen. Part spy novel and part allegory, The Man Who Was Thursday centres on Gabriel Symes, a poet who was recruited by Scotland Yard to secretly infiltrate an anarchist group. During his first meeting with the anarchists, Symes is unexpectedly elected as a new delegate to the central council. Each member is named after a day of the week, and so Syme becomes ‘Thursday’. As he begins to unmask the other council members, he discovers that all is not what it seems: one by one these supposed anarchists are unveiled to be working undercover too. That is until Syme gets to man called ‘Sunday’… As whimsical and dreamlike as it is pacey and exhilarating, Chesterton’s iconic nov