Douglas Johnson
A Great, Wonderful Storybook
Debussy once asked Mallarme if he could set one of his poems to music. But, replied Mallarme, have I not already set it to music? Hilary Mantel has decided to treat the French Revolution as a novel. But was it not already a novel? The Revolution forms a concentration of extraordinary events that defies ordinary belief. Such a tumultuous and incoherent story of violence, accident and fear is already the stuff of fiction.
But Mantel is right. No historian can explain, except to the reluctant satisfaction of other historians, how it was that within a very short period of time France was beset by civil war and rejected the principles by which its society had been governed, namely, the monarchy, the Church and the aristocracy. And then, within a few years, France emerged as a solid, surviving state, dominated by a conservative peasantry and a self-satisfied bourgeoisie. To understand this we have to use our imagination. Mantel, having read many history books, takes us into the private world of the leading revolutionary characters. In a novel of more than 800 pages, a series of short scenes brings us into intimate contact with those who are the official leaders of the revolutionary
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Within hours, the news spread. A grimy gang of desperadoes had been captured just in time to stop them setting out on an assassination plot of shocking audacity.'
@katheder on the Cato Street Conspiracy of 1820.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/butchers-knives-treason-and-plot
'It is the ... sketches of the local and the overlooked that lend this book its density and drive, and emphasise Britain’s mostly low-key riches – if only you can be bothered to buy an anorak and seek.'
Jonathan Meades on the beauty of brutalism.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/castles-of-concrete
'Cruickshank’s history reveals an extraordinary eclecticism of architectural styles and buildings, from Dutch Revivalism to Arts and Crafts experimentation, from Georgian terraces to Victorian mansion blocks.'
William Boyd on the architecture of Chelsea.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/where-george-eliot-meets-mick-jagger