The Bastille Spy
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Inside accounts of the Bastille have been aided by several first-hand memoirs, including Secret Memoirs of Robert, Count de Parades, on Coming Out of the Bastille and an Account of His Successful Transactions as a Spy in England by Robert de Parades, and Escape from the Bastille, the Life and Legend of Latude by Claude Quetel.
Always on my desk are Liza Picard’s colourful accounts of everyday historical living, in this case: Dr Johnson’s London, and Professor Vivian Jones’s Women in the Eighteenth Century.
Political fashions of the time have been elucidated by Fashion in the Times of Jane Austen by Sarah Jane Downing and Georgians Revealed, published by the British Library. Kitchen scenes and food, are informed by Georgian Cookery by Jennifer Stead and Cooking for Kings: The Life of Antonin Careme by Ian Kelly. The early history of hot air ballooning was detailed in The Age of the Aeronaut by Fraser Simon.
And although a fictional work, Hilary Mantel’s A Place of Greater Safety must be considered a work of fact in so many regards and a very great one at that.
Finally, big picture French Revolution accounts were gleaned from Christopher Hibbert’s exhaustive The French Revolution, and probably my favourite of all, Stephen Clarke’s hilarious and informative The French Revolution and What Went Wrong. If you read one book on the French Revolution, make it this one.