# The Wisdom of Father Brown — Character guide

> Key figures in The Wisdom of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton.

- [Father Brown](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_wisdom_of_father_brown_se/characters/father_brown.md): Father Brown arrives in Scarborough like a harmless sea-beast shambling into Dr. Orion Hood's terribly tidy consulting rooms, all clerical black and breathless geniality, and promptly asks the great criminologist to solv
- [Flambeau](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_wisdom_of_father_brown_se/characters/flambeau.md): Flambeau walks into a fairy-tale town with a sword-stick in his hand and a past the police would very much like to discuss, and he is the one who tells Father Brown that this is the only place in Europe where a man was e
- [Colonel Cray](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_wisdom_of_father_brown_se/characters/colonel_cray.md): Colonel Cray belongs to the world of retired officers, orderly households, and small domestic scandals that turn out to have sharper edges than anyone expects. His entanglement in a bizarre affair involving a salad and a
- [Sir Wilson Seymour](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_wisdom_of_father_brown_se/characters/sir_wilson_seymour.md): Sir Wilson Seymour moves through the affair with the unhurried authority of a man who has spent a lifetime being listened to, which makes his confusion all the more unsettling to the people around him. He is the kind of 
- [John Boulnois](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_wisdom_of_father_brown_se/characters/john_boulnois.md): Boulnois writes articles on weak points in Darwinian evolution for a journal nobody reads, until an American newspaper turns him into a headline and sends a reporter to his door. He lives outside Oxford in happy ignoranc
- [Sir Cecil Fanshaw](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_wisdom_of_father_brown_se/characters/sir_cecil_fanshaw.md): Sir Cecil Fanshaw belongs to the class of English gentlemen whose names open doors and whose composure is expected to be unshakeable, which is precisely why the odd affair of the purple wig unsettles everyone involved. H
- [Dr. Orion Hood](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_wisdom_of_father_brown_se/characters/dr_orion_hood.md): Dr. Orion Hood is the eminent specialist in moral disorders whose sea-front chambers, chained classics and cigar boxes arranged by strength, embody a rigid scientific order. He has advised the police on poisoning the Fre
- [Captain Cutler](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_wisdom_of_father_brown_se/characters/captain_cutler.md): Captain Cutler moves through the tale as a man of the sea whose practical manner conceals something the priest cannot immediately name. His presence unsettles the ordinary social surface of the story, and the gongs, the 
- [Signor Muscari](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_wisdom_of_father_brown_se/characters/signor_muscari.md): Signor Muscari is the black-maned, theatrical poet who scandalises the practical banker Harrogate and charms his daughter with talk of southern fire and daggers. He defies Ezza's cheerful denial of brigandage by declarin
- [Prince Otto of Grossenmark](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_wisdom_of_father_brown_se/characters/prince_otto.md): Prince Otto of Heiligwaldenstein and Grossenmark dies in the twilight woods with his face flung up to the moon, and the court's consternation is compounded by foreign mining experts and Prussian officials more interested
- [Dr. Hirsch](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_wisdom_of_father_brown_se/characters/dr_hirsch.md): Dr. Hirsch is the absurd, pale figure on the balcony whose champagne-bottle neck and weedy beard make the crowd laugh before his prim decision silences them. He claims he will not face Dubosc because honour forbids it, o
- [Mr. Glass](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_wisdom_of_father_brown_se/characters/mr_glass.md): Mr. Glass is the lodger whose non-appearance drives the mystery Father Brown brings to Dr. Hood's consulting rooms, a case tangled up with Maggie MacNab, young Todhunter and a household of sharp tempers. His bald head an
- [Sir Claude Champion](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_wisdom_of_father_brown_se/characters/sir_claude_champion.md): Sir Claude Champion is the showy aristocrat whose omnivorous culture and restless publicity make him a Renaissance prince of the English papers. He and the poor scholar John Boulnois were inseparable at school, yet Champ
- [Miss Aurora Rome](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_wisdom_of_father_brown_se/characters/miss_aurora_rome.md): Aurora Rome is the celebrated actress around whom actors, soldiers, and old hedonists orbit like a ring of amorous rivals. Her cleverness runs to one half of humanity only, and she wields it with Napoleonic precision, ba
- [Ezza Montano](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_wisdom_of_father_brown_se/characters/ezza_montano.md): Ezza Montano is the legendary brigand whose name haunts the Apennine passes, spoken of alongside Robin Hood. Posing as a curious courier in the employ of the banker Harrogate, he watches the golden Ethel with a gaze more
- [Arthur Carstairs](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_wisdom_of_father_brown_se/characters/arthur_carstairs.md): Arthur Carstairs took over the family Collection and turned into a pagan priest dedicated to its temple, mixing Roman halfpence with the honour of the Carstairs name. He takes no pleasures, spends nothing on himself, and
- [Lord Pooley](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_wisdom_of_father_brown_se/characters/lord_pooley.md): A nobleman who appears in the story of the perishing of the Pendragons.
- [Frank Harrogate](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_wisdom_of_father_brown_se/characters/frank_harrogate.md): Frank Harrogate is the curly-haired son of the millionaire banker, a really fine lad whom nobody looks at while all eyes rest on his sister. His father's fortune and Ethel's flirtations place him at the edge of the famil
- [Ethel Harrogate](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_wisdom_of_father_brown_se/characters/ethel_harrogate.md): Ethel Harrogate is the radiant centre of the hotel table, her Greek head set above the sapphire sea like a goddess's. Proud, fond of fashionable pleasures, and a fond daughter but an arrant flirt, she wears her conventio
- [Admiral Pendragon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_wisdom_of_father_brown_se/characters/admiral_pendragon.md): Admiral Pendragon belongs to an old Cornish family whose men are said to die by drowning, a superstition he carries with the grim humor of a sailor who has outlived the sea's worst. When Father Brown visits his cliffside
- [Isidore Bruno](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_wisdom_of_father_brown_se/characters/isidore_bruno.md): A man whose death is investigated in the Mistake of the Machine.
- [Mrs. Boulnois](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_wisdom_of_father_brown_se/characters/mrs_boulnois.md): The wife of John Boulnois, involved in the strange crime.
- [Drugger Davis](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_wisdom_of_father_brown_se/characters/drugger_davis.md): A man involved in the mystery of the head of Caesar.
- [Greywood Usher](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_wisdom_of_father_brown_se/characters/greywood_usher.md): A man involved in the mystery of the purple wig.
- [Colonel Dubosc](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_wisdom_of_father_brown_se/characters/colonel_dubosc.md): A French colonel involved in the Duel of Dr. Hirsch.
- [M. Armagnac](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_wisdom_of_father_brown_se/characters/m_armagnac.md): A Frenchman involved in the Duel of Dr. Hirsch.
- [Dr. Oliver Oman](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_wisdom_of_father_brown_se/characters/dr_oliver_oman.md): A doctor involved in the mystery of the man in the passage.
- [The Duke](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_wisdom_of_father_brown_se/characters/the_duke.md): A duke involved in the mystery of the purple wig.
- [Samuel Harrogate](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_wisdom_of_father_brown_se/characters/samuel_harrogate.md): The father of Frank Harrogate in the Fairy Tale of Father Brown.
- [Hedwig](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_wisdom_of_father_brown_se/characters/hedwig.md): A woman mentioned in the Duel of Dr. Hirsch.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_wisdom_of_father_brown_se/characters