A Place of Greater Safety

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It is notable for being fairly epic in scope while maintaining an intimate tone and character-driven focus, and for averting Hollywood History. It also features vast supporting cast, all of whom are real historical figures. I found it fascinating, and was drawn into an understanding of the terrible events, as well as wondering, overall, how much difference it made. Gabrielle Danton: A royalist surrounded my revolutionaries. Willfully naive but principled, and subtler than others give her credit for.

With Carl Prekopp as Camille; Mark Stobbart as Danton; Sam Troughton as Robespierre; Chloe Pirrie as Lucile; Sarah Thom as Gabrielle; Sam Dale as Mirabeau; Alex Tregear as Adele; Jessica Turner as Annette; Stephen Crtichlow as Herault; David Hownslow as Brissot; and Chris Pavlo as Nobleman. Hilary Mantel has soaked herself in the history of the period...and a striking picture emerges of the exhilaration, dynamic energy and stark horror of those fearful days.’ Daily Telegraph Contrary to the tendency in Anglophone media to focus on the crumbling of "l'Ancien Regime," A Place of Greater Safety is explicitly told through the eyes of the revolutionaries, opting to explore the lives of the previously-unknown men and women who gained fame and infamy in the swells of the Great Revolution.Maximilien Robespierre: An earnest young provincial lawyer; slight, sober, and punctilious. He is unassuming, reliable, and competent, but a bore. Abhors the sight of blood. While the afterlife is mundane, the real world is re-cast as anarchic purgatory, with night closing in on its “perjured ministers and burnt out paedophiles …” Alison is also haunted by apparitions far more sinister than cardigan-hunting grannies, including her lecherous spirit guide Morris. Dark hints intrude, suggestions of a childhood in which he played some despicable part: a mother who prostituted her own under-aged daughter; feral dogs with a taste for human flesh; a disembodied head floating in the bath. This feels agonisingly literal, but we sense that Mantel intends these vulgar, rampaging demons to stand in also for dislodged fragments of memory, the novel reaching for metaphor to make its point, which is of course about the everyday world, not the spiritual one. We might, it suggests, be just as likely to find hell growing up in a rundown house in Aldershot as anywhere else. Georges-Jacques Danton: A gifted, pragmatic, ambitious young lawyer. "Erotically ugly" and thuggish in appearance due to a violent animal husbandry incident in his childhood. Married to: If you could take any character from A Place of Greater Safety out to dinner, who would it be and why? I don't think I could read the book. It is, like Hilary Mantel's two and soon to be three historical books on the Tudors, a meandering tale that moves from past to present tense; in and out of dialogue; with many characters, each of whom Jonathan Keeble brings to life using a different voice/ accent.It is the narration that gives life and colour to this edition; and helps to sort out the very many characters along the way.

A tour-de-force of historical imagination, this is the story of three young men at the dawn of the French Revolution. Georges-Jacques Danton: zealous, energetic, debt-ridden. Maximilien Robespierre: small, diligent, and terrified of violence. And Camille Desmoulins: a genius of rhetoric, charming, handsome, but erratic and untrustworthy. This article about a historical novel of the 1990s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. An extraordinary and overwhelming novel...immensely detailed and yet fast-moving...she has set herself to capture the excitement and intellectual fervour of the period. She does it admirably...a tour de force.’ Scotsman If she was not available - and she was executed before him - I would invite Maximilien Robespierre. Mind you, I doubt if he would accept - he wasn't quite a recluse, but he was not a social adept. Kept his energies focussed on the task in hand, which for him, was to improve the wellbeing and lives of the poor people of France. I liked his gentility and kindness. Crafty tensions, twists and high drama...a bravura display of her endlessly inventive, eerily observant style.’ Times Literary SupplementThis is an immensely powerful book, a tour de force, which drew me so into the times that I found it difficult sometimes to relate to my day-to-day 21st century life after a session of listening. Mantel’s triumph is to make us understand – and even like, in a grudging sort of way – this historically unattractive figure. Her meticulous research is lightly worn, unlike the carefully considered fabrics and textures of the courtiers, and her depiction of the many flawed human instruments on which Cromwell plays is sadly convincing. Mantel uses the leaders of the Revolution – Danton, Robespierre and Camille Desmouslins – as the pivotal characters, which, of course, they were, but also manages to use their characters and positions to give information about lesser known characters, such as Lucille Desmoulins, without whom the revolution may not have run in the same way. A gripping tale based on historical events, extremely well read, each character having his own voice.