French revolution
Porcelain-painting during the French revolution
People don’t accumulate stuff any more. When the late Victorian houses on our street change hands their interiors are stripped…
What on earth has happened to Simon Schama: The Romantics and Us reviewed
‘You may think our modern world was born yesterday,’ said Simon Schama at the beginning of The Romantics and Us.…
Why do writers enjoy walking so much?
Writers like walking. When people ask us why, we say it’s what writers do. ‘Just popping out to buy a…
From blissful dawn to bleak despair: the end of the revolutionary dream
Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey were undergraduates when they met in June 1794, Coleridge at Cambridge university and Southey…
Miserable libretto, music to match: Andrea Chénier reviewed
Opera North continues to be the most reliable, inspiring, resourceful and enterprising opera company in the United Kingdom, and all…
A short history of statue-toppling
Sculptural topplings provide an index of changing times, says Martin Gayford
The strange death of Louis XIV
At the beginning of the summer of 1715 Louis XIV complained of a pain in the leg. In mid-August gangrene…
BBC2’s Napoleon reviewed: does Andrew Roberts’s pet Frog need rehabilitating?
I adore Andrew Roberts. We go back a long way. Once, on a boating expedition gone wrong in the south…
Andrea Chénier, Royal Opera House, review: like a Carry On - but without the jokes
Who on earth could have predicted that a hoary old operatic melodrama set in revolutionary France would find resonance in…
Terror plots, threats to liberties, banks in crisis: welcome to Britain during the Napoleonic Wars
At the end of the 18th century, Britain shuddered in Boney’s shadow, living in constant expectation of invasion and occupation, says Nigel Jones
The queen, the cardinal and the greatest con France ever saw
You usually know where you are with a book that promises the story ‘would violate the laws of plausibility’ if…
The men who invented Napoleon
Writing about Napoleon is a risky business. It exposes the author to the brickbats of the blind worshippers for whom…
