Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953) was a French-born British writer, historian and Liberal MP of enormous output, producing history, travel writing, essays and comic verse for children. He was a close ally of G. K. Chesterton in advocating distributism, the pairing prompting Bernard Shaw to coin the Chesterbelloc. The Path to Rome, his account of walking from Toul to Rome in 1901, is generally regarded as his best book.