A Place of Greater Safety is a 1992 novel by Hilary Mantel. It concerns the events of the French Revolution, focusing on the lives of Georges Danton, Camille Desmoulins, and Maximilien Robespierre from their childhood through the execution of the Dantonists, and also featuring hundreds of other historical figures. 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. This 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. When they have enough to eat and when the rich and the government stop bribing treacherous tongues and pens to deceive them; when their interests are identified with the people.

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 TelegraphIt 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. This may be how it was for Madame Guillotine, or it may be the author's detailing, but this happens over and over again. The arc of the third and longest part of the trilogy is framed by a conversation between Cromwell and the Spanish ambassador: “What will you do,” asks the ambassador, “when the king turns on you, as sooner or later he turns on everyone close to him?” Cromwell’s downfall and death are a matter of fact; Mantel’s skill is never to let the tension drop as the mythologised life of an ordinary man, with no pedigree, unravels amid the treachery of a class-based realpolitik. Mantel Pieces (2020)

A gripping tale based on historical events, extremely well read, each character having his own voice. Ben Miles as Thomas Cromwell and Lydia Leonard as Anne Boleyn in Wolf Hall. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The GuardianI had heard that the Royal Shakespeare Company was going to dramatise Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies and so when, a few months down the line, I got a call asking if I’d like to play Thomas Cromwell I was excited and slightly daunted. That was the beginning of my journey with Cromwell, and also with Hilary Mantel, who I first met in the RSC rehearsal rooms. Having just read her books it really hit home what an incredible piece of work they are. Mantel has done her research, explored deep into the sources, as we know she always does. What the historical novel gives us beyond those facts is imaginative proximity. The historian cannot attribute motivation but the novelist must go deep into the head, find desire, faith, love and hatred – and in the characters of the French Revolution she does, to brilliant effect. Danton most of all is made real, a man of fear and hope, desire and equivocation. And she brings to life the ordinary people whom Marie Antoinette sees on her way to the scaffold, the glass-workers who down tools and stream out for revolution. The middle period of Cromwell’s life sees him at the apogee of his success: history’s most successful accountant, a loyal family man and an embodiment of his own maxim: “Love your neighbour. Study the market. Increase the spread of benevolence. Bring in better figures next year.” Anne Boleyn has been beheaded along with several of his deadliest enemies. But though a sort of peace has broken out, it’s “the peace of the hen coop when the fox has run home”. The Mirror and the Light (2020) Camille Desmoulins: The sweetheart of the Revolution. A provocateur with a vulnerable-yet-audacious charm, he is Robespierre's childhood friend and Danton's right-hand man. Outwardly dashing, sensitive, and polite, Camille has a strange and destructive personality. Married to: verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{