Maximilien Robespierre began his career as a pure idealist. Born in the French town of Arras in 1758, his mother died when he ...

Revolutionary France in 1794 was a crucible, combining all the elements that would embody Western politics in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. All eyes were on Paris. Depending on who was ...

Some years ago, in Paris, my son and I read Christopher Hibbert’s history of the French Revolution. When we were done, we talked about how the book had inadvertently convinced us that Maximilien ...

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Two and a quarter centuries after he was guillotined on what is now Place de la Concorde in Paris, Maximilien ...

Ruth Scurr (ed.) Carlyle’s The French Revolution (London and New York: Continuum, 2010) and Ruth Scurr, Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution (London: Vintage, 2006) The boy kneels in ...

While historical record includes a wealth of evidence that backs up negative attitudes towards the gathering masses, it is also chockful of individuals who were behaving badly too and yet they tend to ...

Reading an article on Maximilien Robespierre published in the New York Review of Books (23 June 2022) has led me to reflect (or more accurately, further reflect) on both my short time as an active ...

Ever since the "prime public functionary" - previously known as Louis XVI - lost his head on the Place de la Révolution in Paris, Maximilien de Robespierre has been seen as the evil, green-eyed genius ...