The society to which Fréron proposed to introduce him is some huge poisonous organism limping to its death; people like you, he said to Maximilien, are the only fit people to run a country. In 1767--when Armand was able to walk, and Anne-Clothilde was the baby of the household--Jean-Nicolas said to his wife:"Camille ought to go away to school, you know. Georges-Jacques Danton - with a face ripped apart by a bull at an early age and the lungs of an orator. Lucile is in love with him from the beginning, even though she knows the nature of his relationship with her mother. As a young man, he has a sexual relationship with the lawyer in whose offices he trains, even though it is unclear how consensual this is on Desmoulins’ part.

He was taken up by Stanislas Fréron, who was five years older, who was named after his godfather, the King of Poland. When we finally get to Danton's own voice, a rarely intruding narratorial voice sets it up, saying 'she' didn't expect for Danton to speak, but time is running out (and this with more than half of the book left)! Impressive undoubtedly and full of sly wit - but I wanted something deeply engrossing to fall into while on holiday in France and this kept my brain switched on, my emotions largely off.In a fascinating passage, Mantel’s omniscient narrator lists the ways in which people can be complicit in a crime, including standing by and doing nothing when a crime is committed, so we can tell that she believes Robespierre is complicit, although not directly involved. You feel, by the end, that you have not so much been reading a book about the French Revolution as having actually been part of the experience. He was a mild, easygoing man who pleased his wife by doing exactly as she told him; much of his time nowadays he spent in an outlying farm building where he was inventing a machine for spinning cotton. Who can fail to be entranced by the mercurial Camille Desmoulins, enfant terrible of the Revolution? Camille is a fascinating, weird character, annoying, childlike, selfish but also brilliant with words and charming.

In the end A Place of Greater Safety felt intellectual satisfying, but left me feeling that most of the characters were mythologicalized, larger than life superbeings, who always have witty words ready for any situation.

Just before Christmas they received an effusive letter from the principal describing the astonishing progress that Camille had made. Later the grown-up Henriette, who was his aunt, lifted him up to look in the coffin before it was closed. Danton did not want England to get involved because he knew that the strength of British sea power would keep the war going on for a long time. I also have to say, as much as I enjoyed reading about Danton and Robespierre, and Mantel’s characterization of them, I missed Desmoulins when he was absent from the book.

Even then, Robespierre feels guilt over turning against his friend Desmoulins, but in the end he chooses power over friendship. Whilst at first the size and perhaps subject of this book may be off putting I would recommend giving it a try.His father crosses the room and scoops him up, prizing his fingers away from the window frame to which he clings. The Godards' name lacks the coveted particle of nobility; for all that, they tend to get on in life, and when you attend in Guise and environs a musical evening or a funeral or a Bar Association dinner, there is always one present to whom you can genuflect. There are cousins all over the Laon district, all over Picardy: a bunch of nerveless crooks, always talking. Sometimes the whole group would be seized by pointless hilarity at some phrase such as "Your mother hopes you have been to confession," and would repeat it to each other for days with tears of merriment in their eyes.

Now he goes up twice a year, and Vinot--who used to discuss his Life Plan with him when they were students--had walked right past him in the Place Dauphine not knowing him at all. Its alumni were celebrated if diverse; Voltaire, now in honored exile, had studied there, and Monsieur the Marquis de Sade, now holed up in one of his chateaux while his wife worked for the commutation of a sentence passed on him recently for poisoning and buggery. How something so horrific could possibly happen is shown through full characterizations and likely scenarios that don't stray from the historical record, though we don't get (or need) all the details. First off, I have to confess that when I originally picked up the book I found the opening chapters somewhat dry and uninspiring.To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.