Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23495 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Independent on Sunday
‘fascinating, chilling meditation on good intentions twisted into evil deeds’

Helen Zaltzman, The Observer
'an engrossing account'

Guardian
An "impressive biography"

Customer Reviews

Brilliant, a new insight, and absolutely unputdownable
This is a fantastic achievement, and really readable with it. The French Revolution is one of those events which is difficult for the modern mind to get fully to grips with - reasonably straightforward perhaps until about 1791 and then increasingly foggy until 1794. The haziness largely centres on Robespierre, because he is difficult for us, in a (post-Marxian) world in which we think through political formulae, really to get to grips with. As he moves increasingly centre-stage it is important to understand what he is after, and why the revolution sways chaotically around him. Ruth Scurr really gets to the heart of Maximilian Robespierre (the "Incorruptible", as she continually describes him), and translates him into modern form. This is a highly sympathetic history, but avowedly a convincing one. Here is a man with a true vision of virtue, of a society of truth and goodness, and in touch with its element. If the revolution is anything, he believes, it must achieve goodness, whatever the ambiguities that involves. It is remarkable how popular that man's vision for the revolution proved to be for his people in a time of almost anarchic violence and uncertainty. This was not a bloodthirsty despot, the first of the dictators. The Festival of the Supreme Being was a sublime moment of realisation for Robespierre, even if not necessarily for his own people, and far from the Cult of Personality of the later dictators, as it has been seen. Two hundred years down the road here is a British historian dishing the "sea-green" image of Carlyle which has so influenced our Anglocentric view of Robespierre since then.
This is fine revisionist writing, clearly argued, and above all, absolutely unputdownable. The sort of book you think will take you a week, but which you finish in a day and a half.

Historical Biography as it should be

One of the most insightful biographies I have ever read.The Author gets into the mind of Robespierre and takes us to the eye of the storm that surrounded him.

Where I would differ from other reviewers,is that I feel the Author paints a far from flattering picture of her subject.My take is that she portrays Robespierre as a zealous, self-rightious fanatic motivated by idealogical "purity" and unable to see others as human beings, as individuals with aspirations and ambitions which might be just as valid as his own, and with which he would have to compromise.

The image of Robespierre which emerges is a rather chilling one of a man who saw people as mere specimens on which to practice his social experiments much as Lenin would do to even more devestating effect much later.

Truly Gripping.
This is a wonderful book. Readable, passionate and yet objective.
Scurr gives an excellant biography of the 'Incorruptible' while providing the backdrop of the revolution. Very impressive.