‘Happiness is a new idea in Europe,’ the austere, implacable revolutionary Louis de Saint-Just wrote in 1791, as events in France were moving swiftly towards the establishment of a republic and the onset of Terror. The French Revolution was (if we prefer not to go back so far as the Renaissance) the cradle of modernity.
While well-heeled, self-preserving lawyers of eminence and rank fled to London to avoid a perilous undertaking, John Cooke, a low-born Puritan of great courage, submitting himself to God’s purposes and remaining true to his Roundhead convictions, accepted the brief to prosecute Charles I in the High Court established by an act of parliament for the
Ever since Edmund Burke deserted the liberalism that had distinguished him as a champion of American independence and Irish home rule and threw up his hands in horror at events across the water, generations of writers have recoiled in disgust from the bloody excesses of the French Revolution. In other words, Robespierre and his allies
What is one to make of this little book? There is much that is good in it, about new handguns, their use in crime and warfare and their role as fashionable accessories (notably in portraiture) of the rich and proud; about the ‘spinning’ rife in Renaissance pamphlet wars; and about that age’s wantonly cruel methods
Most biographies are written against a sketchy background of historical events drawn with just enough broad strokes of the brush to provide context for a life. Martin Crowe’s book, apart from the affecting last chapters on the autumn of Schindler’s life, is just the opposite. The milieu in which Oskar Schindler, the famous saviour of
The Age of Napoleonby Alistair HorneWeidenfeld & Nicolson, £14.99, pp. 182, ISBN 029760791X More words have been written about Napoleon than about any other historical figure, even Abraham Lincoln. Whether he betrayed, or carried on, the French Revolution is a question that agitates historians. Certainly the seeds of the French urge to mastery over Europe
The Ancient Olympicsby Nigel SpiveyOUP, £17.99, pp. 264, ISBN 0192804332Olympics in Athens 1896: The Invention of the Modern Olympic Gamesby Michael Llewellyn SmithProfile, £16.99, pp. 290, ISBN 186197342X So politics should be kept out of sports? Tell that to the Greeks. Two absorbing new books about the ancient Olympic Games, each crammed with information about
‘For his part, she filled a significant void in his human intercourse (he had been happy when he found the intimacy of their letters was at once transferred to the vocal).’ Further down the page: ‘He had had Emma Lucie promise to keep watch on her … and to take whatever measures were necessary, in
In 1743 John Breads, a butcher, stabbed to death Allen Grebell in the declining Cinque port town of Rye on the east Sussex coast. Grebell was the brother-in-law of James Lamb, the mayor who lived in the town’s big house, Lamb House, that was later to be home to Henry James and E. F. Benson.
The Enterprise of England, the name given by His Most Catholic Majesty, Philip II of Spain, to the attempted overthrow of Queen Elizabeth I and the conquest of England, was part of a great plan. In 1588, when the Spanish Armada set sail for the English Channel, Philip already controlled the greater part of the