[2] According to Joseph Pearce, "The press made much of the story that the son of the former Archbishop of Canterbury had become a Catholic, and the revelation rocked the Anglican establishment in a way reminiscent of the days of the Oxford Movement and the conversion of Newman.

"[5] Writing during the pontificate of Pope Pius X and before the First World War, Benson accurately predicted interstate highways, weapons of mass destruction, the use of aircraft to drop bombs on both military and civilian targets, and passenger air travel in advanced Zeppelins called "Volors".

Like many other Catholics of the era in which he wrote,[citation needed] Benson believed in Masonic conspiracy theories and shared the political and economic views of G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc.

A Catholic and former Conservative Member of Parliament who witnessed the marginalisation of his religion and the destruction of his party, Templeton describes to the two priests the last century of British and world history.

The world has been divided into three power-blocs: a European Confederation of Marxist one-party states and their colonies in Africa; the "Eastern Empire", whose emperor descends from the Japanese and Chinese imperial families; and the "American Republic", consisting of North and South America.

Oliver Brand, an influential MP from Croydon, listens as his secretary, Mr. Phillips, describes the seemingly inevitable rush toward war between Europe and the Eastern Empire.

A mysterious Senator Felsenburgh has unexpectedly taken charge of the American Republic's peace delegation and is travelling the Empire, delivering speeches to rapt audiences in their own languages.

He cautions that violence must never be used – the Mass and the rosary must be the primary weapon against the coming persecution – and recommends forming a new religious order, with no habit or badge, "freer than the Jesuits, poorer than the Franciscans, more mortified than the Carthusians: men and women alike – the three vows for their Church; each Bishop responsible for their sustenance; a lieutenant in each country.... And Christ Crucified for their patron".

That afternoon, at the Feast of Maternity, Felsenburgh enters the Cathedral dressed in the red and black robes of a British High Court judge and speaks of the destruction of Rome and the recent pogroms against Christians, explaining that future generations of men must flush with shame to remember that mankind had once turned its back on the risen light.

As firebombs begin to rain down on Nazareth, Pope Sylvester and the cardinals calmly continue to chant the Pange Lingua before a Host exposed in a monstrance on the altar.

Frederick Rolfe's anti-Modernist satirical novel Hadrian VII inspired numerous aspects of Lord of the World, including the introductory first chapter.

Due to his depiction of a Wellsian future as a murderous global police state, Benson's novel has been called one of the first modern works of dystopian science fiction.

In one of the three notebooks he kept while writing Lord of the World, Benson wrote that while Napoleon's weakness was "his soft heart: he forgave," Felsenburgh, "never forgives: for political crime he strips of position, making the man incapable of holding office; for treachery to himself he drops them out of his councils."

The conspiracy to suicide bomb President Felsenburgh and its grisly aftermath are inspired by the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, in which a small group of English Catholic noblemen led by Robert Catesby planned to blow up King James I of England during an address before Parliament.

The first chapter, which describes the overthrow of the British royal family, the abolition of the House of Lords, the disestablishment of the Church of England, and the closing of the universities is inspired by the Labour Party's platform at the time the novel was written.

Julian Felsenburgh's sermon at St. Paul's and the emotional reaction of his listeners are inspired by press reports of the Reverend Evan Roberts and the 1904-1905 Welsh Revival.

Roberts, however, eventually came to believe that his ministry was not of God, voluntarily left the public eye, and spent the remaining years of his life resisting efforts to draw him back to the revival circuit.

The Anti-Catholic riots that follow the discovery of the planned suicide bombing are inspired by Anti-Jewish Pogroms in the Russian Empire, which also took place with the collusion of senior Government officials and policemen.

The first two reveal that Benson based the physical appearances of Percy Franklin and President Julian Felsenburgh on "a rather prominent socialist politician" whose name Martindale does not disclose.

A sentence in the second paragraph of Section III began as follows, in the British first edition: In short, it seemed that he could do no good by remaining in England, and the temptation to be present at the final act of justice in the East by which those who had indirectly been the cause of his tragedy were to be wiped out…In the corrupted text found in most modern editions, the passage reads (erroneous portion in italics): In short, it seemed that he could do no good by remaining in England, and the temptation to be present at the final act of justice in the East by which land, and, in fact, it was more than likely that if she were to be wiped out…Upon its 1907 publication, Lord of the World caused an enormous stir among Catholics, non-Catholic Christians, and even among non-Christians.

Some Marxists were reportedly "delighted" by the ending and one non-Catholic reader wrote that Lord of the World had, "struck heaven out of my sky, and I don't know how to get it back again.

[22] In a letter to Benson, Jesuit priest Joseph Rickaby wrote, "I have long thought that Antichrist would be no monster, but a most charming, decorous, attractive person, exactly your Felsenburgh.

The abstruseness of Modernism, the emptiness of Absolutism, the farce of Humanitarianism, the bleakness (so felt by Huxley and Oliver Lodge) of sheer physical science, that is what your Antichrist makes up for.

He is, as you have made him, the perfection of the Natural, away from and in antithesis to God and His Christ.... As Newman says, a man may be near death and yet not die, but still the alarms of his friends are each time justified and are finally fulfilled; so of the approach of Antichrist.

"[23] Shortly after Benson's novel was published, British historian and future Catholic convert Christopher Dawson paid a visit to Imperial Germany.

"[24] Furthermore, despite Benson's subtle contempt for "Greek Christianity",[25] Mother Catherine Abrikosova, a Byzantine Catholic Dominican nun, former Marxist, and future martyr in Joseph Stalin's concentration camps, translated Lord of the World from English to Russian shortly before the Bolshevik Revolution.

[26] Although it is not as well known as the dystopian writings of Evgeny Zamyatin, George Orwell, Ray Bradbury and Aldous Huxley, Lord of the World continues to have many admirers—especially among Conservative and Traditionalist Catholics.

[28]EWTN talk show host and American Chesterton Society President Dale Ahlquist has also praised Benson's novel and said that it deserves a wider audience.

"[30] Cardinal Ratzinger proceeded to quote from Pope Benedict XV's 1920 encyclical Bonum sane: "The coming of a world state is longed for, by all the worst and most distorted elements.

[32] He referenced the book within the context of "ideological colonization" and in response to a question about non-binary gender options appearing on government forms, saying that such a phenomenon reminded him of the Benson's "futuristic" world, “in which differences are disappearing and everything is the same, everything is uniform, a single leader of the whole world.”[33]