Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson
Heads Will Roll
The Terror: Civil War in the French Revolution
By David Andress
Little, Brown 437pp £20 order from our bookshop
This sounds familiar: ‘There is no doubt that he was a good man and a loving father and husband, nor that he had the intellectual capacity to cope with affairs of state. He was, however, a vacillator, often unable to decide between conflicting courses of action, anxious to avoid confrontation, and inclined to give his backing to whoever had had the last word, whatever their merits.’ He was often heard to say, ‘I want to be loved.’
David Andress could almost be writing about our own beloved Prince of Wales. But he is actually describing the character – well-meaning, not uncourageous, but deeply flawed – of Louis XVI, one of the last Bourbons, who, famously, could neither remember nor forget anything.
A description of the ludicrous flight to
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‘He has become a kind of global guru, public intellectual and consultant to the great. He is the ultimate geopolitical gerontocrat.’
From July 2022: Piers Brendon on Henry Kissinger.
Piers Brendon - Margaret Thatcher As I Knew Her
Piers Brendon: Margaret Thatcher As I Knew Her - Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy by Henry Kissinger
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‘Even setting to one side the historically neuralgic relationship with ... Ireland, Britain’s insular periphery has from at least the time of the Romans presented difficulties for authorities wishing to centralise.’
Peter Marshall on Britain's islands.
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Peter Marshall: Notes from the Atlantic Archipelago - The Britannias: An Island Quest by Alice Albinia
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