A Place of Greater Safety

A large historical novel about the French Revolution, centred on three men who begin as ambitious young provincial lawyers and journalists: Camille Desmoulins, Georges Danton and Maximilien Robespierre. Mantel follows their friendships, rivalries and ideals as the old order collapses in Paris and the movement they helped to create grows more violent and uncertain. She mixes research with imagination, giving the great events a human scale. The book looks at idealism, politics and the cost of revolution, and it shows early the historical ambition she would later bring to Tudor England.