Vive La Revolution: a stand-up history of the French Revolution - Mixed Media - Book Review

New Internationalist, Nov, 2003 by Erin Gill, Louise Gray, Malcolm Lewis, Peter Whittaker

Vive La Revolution

A Stand-Up History of the French Revolution by Mark Steel

(Scribner, ISBN 0 7432 0805 6)

Mark Steel is probably best known for his BBC radio programmes 'The Mark Steel Lectures' in which he dismantles what we think we know about major figures such as Napoleon, Marx or Da Vinci. Using satire and topical comparisons, he constructs an alternative view of historical events which manages to be both funny and left-wing.

In Vive La Revolution, his racy account of French history from the storming of the Bastille to the rise of Napoleon, he has expanded this approach to book length in an attempt to rescue the French Revolution from hostile academics and reactionary opponents who have portrayed the uprising as nothing but chaos and carnage. For Steel, the Revolution was an affirmation of human possibilities; a movement which should continue to inspire and enthuse us. All the revolt lacked was better jokes, which Steel sets about rectifying!

In a refreshingly straightforward approach, Steel traces the course of the Revolution through individual lives; both the well-known figures and the ordinary citizens. Funny and acerbic pen portraits of Robespierre, Danton, Marat and Tom Paine are interspersed with passages of broadbrush social history which show how the Revolution turned the whole world order on its head.

It has to be said that, for an account of the French Revolution, this is a very British-centred book in which the events described are constantly cross-referenced with contemporary British culture, politics and society. This, together with Steel's relentlessly 'blokeish' style would rapidly become wearisome were his observations and anecdotes not so accurate, astute and, above all, hilariously funny.

Rating * * * * PW

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