G. K. Chesterton 
Tales of the Long Bow 

The journals of a club which called itself the Lunatic Asylum: a group of amiable eccentrics who spend their time trying to do the impossible. At first they are nothing more than that: four whimsical idiots with no sense of responsibility, clowning outrageously for the sake of clowning. But soon they begin to see themselves as men with a mission: for they find that they are the only people left in England who are still defending the individual soul against conformity, wealth, and the super-state. (Goodreads)