Allan Massie
Toxic Relations
City of Light, City of Poison: Murder, Magic, and the First Police Chief of Paris
By Holly Tucker
W W Norton 310pp £20.99 order from our bookshop
Holly Tucker is a professor of French and biomedical ethics and society – an unusual combination that perhaps accounts for this book: a history of the Affair of the Poisons, the greatest scandal of the reign of Louis XIV. The affair began with the trial of the Marquise de Brinvilliers in 1675 on suspicion of poisoning her father and two brothers. This gave rise to numerous other allegations of poisoning in high places. It’s a lurid and horrible story that touched the throne: the king’s most famous mistress, the Marquise de Montespan, was among those caught up in it. She was accused of attempting to poison the king after realising that Louis’s attraction to her was fading. Other prominent nobles were implicated too, at least on the fringes, but, apart from the Marquise de Brinvilliers, who was eventually found guilty of murder and executed, most of those involved were lowlifes belonging to the criminal underworld of Paris. Nonetheless, fuel was added to the flames of suspicion by Brinvilliers’s assertion that ‘half of the nobility have done the same things, if I felt like talking, I’d ruin them all’.
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
'Only in Britain, perhaps, could spy chiefs – conventionally viewed as masters of subterfuge – be so highly regarded as ethical guides.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-spy-who-taught-me
In this month's Bookends, @AdamCSDouglas looks at the curious life of Henry Labouchere: a friend of Bram Stoker, 'loose cannon', and architect of the law that outlawed homosexual activity in Britain.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-gross-indecency
'We have all twenty-nine of her Barsetshire novels, and whenever a certain longing reaches critical mass we read all twenty-nine again, straight through.'
Patricia T O'Conner on her love for Angela Thirkell. (£)
https://literaryreview.co.uk/good-gad