World History

Liberal Among the Revolutionaries

Germaine de Staël was no democrat, but the issues that she raised - the relationship between public opinion and power, the destabilising impact of street…

World History

White Terror

The repression that followed the defeat of the left-wing revolt known as the Paris Commune led to almost four times as many deaths in ten…

World History

The World Turned Upside Down

Ideas certainly played an important role in the intellectual and political ferment that was the French Revolution, but it may be going too far to…

World History

The Tick of Reason

Voltaire offended the Calvinists of Geneva, ‘the Protestant Rome’, by criticising its austere lifestyle and setting up a theatre on its outskirts. A new book…

World History

There will be blood

More than any other single figure, Maximilien Robespierre is identified with, and blamed for, the terror and bloodshed of France’s revolutionary years, yet the hostility…