I might have named this novel "The Man of Notting Hill" or "Don Wayne," both harkening back to Miquel de Cervantes' great novel "Don Quixote." It seems to me both are better names than Napoleon of Notting Hill, which was chosen by the publisher, not the author. The author, G.K. Chesterton, originally suggested "The Lion of Notting Hill" or "The King and the Madman." Both of those fit very well and are much better than using Napoleon's name as this book is not about conquest and empire at all. Rather, it is about love of one's own place, smallness, and adhering to warm old ways in the face of cold material progress. If it is about empire at all, it is a warning against it.
The connection with Don Quixote hit me this morning as I was rousing myself from bed. In Adam Wayne, the defender of Notting Hill and of a chivalrous code, we have the old Don from Lamancha. He was a man from somewhere, not just anywhere. He was a man filled with old ideas and old values. He was a man cursing the cold progress of the modern world, as immature as it was 500 years ago. In Adam Wayne, we see this same kind of man. A man considered "mad" by the modern world around him, which has "progressed" beyond all the old blood and guts and honor to a world of the business deal where everything can be bought or sold because money is the ultimate value.
This novel was a puzzle from the beginning. A future with no new technology? A randomly selected kingship? Bringing back old ways being nothing but a mad joke? The end, however, was a clear and glorious call in defense of the permanent things that make life worth living. It is a call to courage and truth; to fighting no matter the odds stacked against us; to resisting the deformities of the modern world; to reaching back into our past for the solutions to the present.
As readers we rally with Adam Wayne. As citizens may we rally for the good and true and home and hearth in our own age—no matter the odds.
“For you and me, and for all brave men, my brother,” said Wayne, in his strange chant, “there is good wine poured in the inn at the end of the world."