Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953) was born in St. Cloud near Paris in 1870. He was the son of Louis Belloc, a French barrister, and his mother was Elizabeth Rayner Parkes, the daughter of the Birmingham radical, Joseph Parkes, and granddaughter of Joseph Priestley. Although she converted to Catholicism from Unitarianism, she remained a political radical and was a strong supporter of women's rights.

The Belloc family moved to England when Hilaire was two years old. After being educated at the Oratory School, Birmingham he served in the French Army. Belloc returned to England in 1892 and became a student at Balliol College, Oxford. He graduated with a first class honours degree but was disappointed when he was not offered a Fellowship. Convinced that he had been rejected because of his Catholic religious views, he went on a lecture tour of the United States. He also had two books of verse published: A Bad Child's Book of Beasts (1896) and Verses and Sonnets (1896).