Darrin M McMahon
Fighting Philosophers
Revolutionary Ideas: An Intellectual History of the French Revolution from The Rights of Man to Robespierre
By Jonathan Israel
Princeton University Press 888pp £27.95 order from our bookshop
Jonathan Israel’s Revolutionary Ideas opens with a scene that will be familiar to anyone who has frequented the expat pubs of Paris: Brits, Yanks and Irish getting pissed together in Francophilic fraternité. True, the group assembled at White’s Hotel on 18 November 1792 was rather more high-minded than your average holidaying punters. They included the English and American revolutionaries Thomas Paine and Joel Barlow, the Presbyterian minister David Williams, the former member of parliament Sir Robert Smyth, the Scots journalist and solider John Oswald, the Irish Lord Edward Fitzgerald and the poets Helen Maria Williams and Robert Merry. Even Wordsworth may have been on hand. Collectively, they raised their glasses in a succession of toasts: to the rights of man and the citizen; to the new French republic; to the end of feudalism; to women; and to patriots pursuing revolution throughout the world. Finally, in the last of the tributes, they drank to universal peace. By that point, clearly, everyone was drunk.
Even so, it is a heady reminder of the idealism that fuelled so much of the French Revolution. It is also a reminder that the spirits of Jonathan Israel, professor of modern European history at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, remain high. Despite nearly two decades of furious
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
'This is entertainment of the highest class.'
@NJCooper_crime reviews new thrillers by Mick Herron, Kassandra Montag, @LVaughanwrites, @AuthorSJBolton, @ajaychow, @tombradby, @SaraParetsky, @writejemmawayne & @GillianMAuthor.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/may-2022-crime-round-up
'The day Simon and I Vespa-d from Daunt to Daunt to John Sandoe to Hatchards to Goldsboro, places where many of the booksellers have become my friends over the years, was the one with the high puffy clouds, the very strong breeze, the cool-warm sunlight.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/temple-of-vespa
Some salient thoughts on book collecting from Michael Dirda with a semi tragic conclusion that I suspect many of us can relate to from the @Lit_Review #WednesdayMotivation