While the afterlife is mundane, the real world is re-cast as anarchic purgatory, with night closing in on its “perjured ministers and burnt out paedophiles …” Alison is also haunted by apparitions far more sinister than cardigan-hunting grannies, including her lecherous spirit guide Morris. Dark hints intrude, suggestions of a childhood in which he played some despicable part: a mother who prostituted her own under-aged daughter; feral dogs with a taste for human flesh; a disembodied head floating in the bath. This feels agonisingly literal, but we sense that Mantel intends these vulgar, rampaging demons to stand in also for dislodged fragments of memory, the novel reaching for metaphor to make its point, which is of course about the everyday world, not the spiritual one. We might, it suggests, be just as likely to find hell growing up in a rundown house in Aldershot as anywhere else. Even so, buying A Place of Greater Safety was still a bit of a whim, as I didn't have much time in which to choose, but was still desperate to be exposed to Mantel's writing. Being very interested in history, particularly the French Revolution (in which the novel is set), the book turned out to be the perfect choice for me, as Mantle's ability to seamlessly interweave fact with fiction proved to be excellent. Hilary Mantel's gripping account of the cataclysmic events of the French Revolution seen through the eyes of three of its most important figures, George Danton, Camille Desmoulins and Maxime Robespierre.

Mantel grew up in Hadfield, Derbyshire, a stony town so windswept she was 11 years old before she saw a real rose. Her family was part of a beached and declining Irish Catholic population of immigrant workers: her mother was a mill-girl, her grandmother did not have the luxury of knowing her own birthday. Mantel’s grandfather served in North Africa and her memory of him is thronged by the men who did not come home. At the age of four, she walked into school knowing how to load a machine-gun belt, and waiting for the moment she would become a boy. “My best days,” she writes of this moment, “were behind me.” I found the book enthralling, and at times it was difficult to put down. Mantel's ability to infer information about the leaders is very intuitive, and this is the quality which really makes this historical novel great. The only slight downside to the book, but bear in mind this is completely down to personal taste, was that at times I felt that as a reader, one had to pay very close attention to Mantel's writing to fully understand her inferences, making it a book best read when fully awake, and not, perhaps the best choice for a relaxing evening read. In a word of warning, if you know nothing about the French Revolution, this is not the best book from which to increase your knowledge. It helped that I had some idea of dates and times and events and, to a lesser degree, persons from that cataclysmic time in the history of France. Get out your encyclopaedias, your Baroness Orczy and Jean Plaidy, and there is always good old Google. Marvellous...It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. Hilary Mantel captures it all.’ Time OutverifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{

This is not an easy listen - you have to pay attention, think and try to understand. There is blood, politics, machinations abounded. Though she was best known for her Wolf Hall triology, the late author’s sparkling oeuvre encompassed essays and memoir as well as novels

Need Help?

This is a big book, and tells the stories of three leading figures from the French Revolution - Robespierre, Danton and Camille Desmoulins. They are different in character, but united, initially, by political ideal and by friendship. Part one: Liberty is narrated by Lizzy Watts and Paul Ritter, dramatised by Melissa Murray and directed by Marc Beeby.

The middle period of Cromwell’s life sees him at the apogee of his success: history’s most successful accountant, a loyal family man and an embodiment of his own maxim: “Love your neighbour. Study the market. Increase the spread of benevolence. Bring in better figures next year.” Anne Boleyn has been beheaded along with several of his deadliest enemies. But though a sort of peace has broken out, it’s “the peace of the hen coop when the fox has run home”. The Mirror and the Light (2020) Georges-Jacques Danton: A gifted, pragmatic, ambitious young lawyer. "Erotically ugly" and thuggish in appearance due to a violent animal husbandry incident in his childhood. Married to: I love the way that Hilary Mantel uses language; I am constantly surprised and delighted by her ability to capture the essence of a character or scene in just a few perfectly chosen words. Mantel has done her research, explored deep into the sources, as we know she always does. What the historical novel gives us beyond those facts is imaginative proximity. The historian cannot attribute motivation but the novelist must go deep into the head, find desire, faith, love and hatred – and in the characters of the French Revolution she does, to brilliant effect. Danton most of all is made real, a man of fear and hope, desire and equivocation. And she brings to life the ordinary people whom Marie Antoinette sees on her way to the scaffold, the glass-workers who down tools and stream out for revolution.Mantel uses the leaders of the Revolution – Danton, Robespierre and Camille Desmouslins – as the pivotal characters, which, of course, they were, but also manages to use their characters and positions to give information about lesser known characters, such as Lucille Desmoulins, without whom the revolution may not have run in the same way. It is notable for being fairly epic in scope while maintaining an intimate tone and character-driven focus, and for averting Hollywood History. It also features vast supporting cast, all of whom are real historical figures. If she was not available - and she was executed before him - I would invite Maximilien Robespierre. Mind you, I doubt if he would accept - he wasn't quite a recluse, but he was not a social adept. Kept his energies focussed on the task in hand, which for him, was to improve the wellbeing and lives of the poor people of France. I liked his gentility and kindness. A gripping tale based on historical events, extremely well read, each character having his own voice. A Place of Greater Safety is a 1992 historical novel by Hilary Mantel, about the French Revolution of 1789. It was the first novel she wrote, but her third to be published. It chronicles the Revolution through the dynamic relationships between three of its central players: Georges-Jacques Danton, Camille Desmoulins, and Maximilien Robespierre. The novel is basically structured as a dramatized triple biography, covering almost the entirety of their intertwined lives from their respective formative years in the 1760s and 1770s all the way to the executions of the former two at the height of the Reign of Terror.