French revolution
The polarising poet, sculptor and ‘avant-gardener’ who maintained a private militia
Not many artists engage in the maintenance of a private militia, and it seems fair to assume that those who…
How French absolutism powered a techno-progressive revolution
The Enlightenment is back. Despite the best efforts of the past decade of handwringing about cultural imperialism and wailing over…
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…
Me time
‘You may think our modern world was born yesterday,’ said Simon Schama at the beginning of The Romantics and Us.…
And did those feet
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…
Northern lights
Opera North continues to be the most reliable, inspiring, resourceful and enterprising opera company in the United Kingdom, and all…
Moving statues
Sculptural topplings provide an index of changing times, says Martin Gayford
Death watch
At the beginning of the summer of 1715 Louis XIV complained of a pain in the leg. In mid-August gangrene…
Pet rescue
I adore Andrew Roberts. We go back a long way. Once, on a boating expedition gone wrong in the south…
Heads will roll
Who on earth could have predicted that a hoary old operatic melodrama set in revolutionary France would find resonance in…
Apocalypse postponed
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 cardinal and the con artist
You usually know where you are with a book that promises the story ‘would violate the laws of plausibility’ if…
The making of the myth
Writing about Napoleon is a risky business. It exposes the author to the brickbats of the blind worshippers for whom…
