"This is the most marvellous book I have read about the French Revolution in the last 50 years. It is beautifully written, with, every now and then, the most wonderful throw-away line. Its importance, in view of all the fuss over the bicentenary of the French Revolution, is that it concentrates very sharply on what the French Revolution was really about: violence and random killing, mostly in Paris... The book is beautifully written, fully illustrated, and throughout enlightened with a great deal of compassion as well as humour."