News

« Headlines

Most reviewed: Children of the Revolution

28.07.08 Anna Richardson

Robert Gildea’s new history of France, Children of the Revolution, was the most reviewed book in last weekend’s national newspapers, occupying the lead review spot in a number of the literary sections.

The book, which is the second volume of the New Penguin History of France and explores French history from 1799 to 1914, attracted much praise and admiration from reviewers.

In the Independent, Richard Vinen stated that “few historians would have the courage to take on such a story. . . Gildea, by contrast, flinches at nothing. He tells the whole story of France in the long 19th century in a book that mixes political narrative with thematic explorations of culture and society”.

However, Vinen added: “There are moments when Gildea’s diligence is his own worst enemy. Every page is loaded with details and statistics”.

John Thornhill, reviewing in the Financial Times, agreed that “Gildea’s fascinating analytical theme sometimes loses itself in the descriptive undergrowth”, and Donald Sassoon wrote in the Sunday Telegraph that “at times, the text sounds like a display of the one-damned-thing-after-the-other school of history”.

Sassoon also pointed out, however, that where Gildea comes into his own is the sections on social and cultural history: “here he changes tack, offering a fascinating multilayered perspective juxtaposing micro and macro history.”

Fellow historical author Graham Robb had nothing but admiration for Gildea: “Although it bulges with certifiable fact, [Children of the Revolution] also gives a face to many neglected individuals and makes wonderful use of fictional characters,” he wrote in the Sunday Times; and Virginia Rounding in the Daily Telegraph highlighted Gildea’s “multifaceted approach, often viewing large events through the prism of individual experience”.

MOST REVIEWED (25th to 27th July): 

Children of the Revolution by Robert Gildea
(Allen Lane 9780713997606 £30)
“A triumph” Independent
“Very enjoyable” Daily Telegraph
“Sober, concise and masterly” Sunday Times
“[At times] a rather unconvincing mix of analysis and narrative” Financial Times
“Analysis takes second place to exposition” Sunday Telegraph

In Zodiac Light by Robert Edric
(Doubleday 9780385612586 £16.99)
“Beautifully imagined” Daily Telegraph
“A potent exercise in fictional recuperation” Sunday Times
“A remarkable, serious, accomlished novel” Times
“A book full - for good and for ill - of knowing manipulations” Guardian

The Kit-Kat Club by Ophelia Field
(HarperPress 9780007178926 £25)
“Instructive and engrossingly readable” Guardian
“Highly intelligent” Observer
“Authoritative portrait of a genuinely revolutionary era” Sunday Telegraph
“[Field] has a native gift for historical retrieval” Times

Life With My Sister Madonna by Christopher Ciccone
(Simon & Schuster 9781847374387 £17.99)
“A minor - if inadvertent - comic masterpiece” Daily Mail
“What saves this book from being just another cloudburst of vitriol is its candour” Sunday Telegraph
“Why not go the whole hog and call it Sissie Dearest?” Observer

Media Anna Richardson Most Reviewed Robert Gildea

See Also