The Giant of the French Revolution: Danton, a Life

George-Jacques Danton was the driving force behind the French Revolution, which brought an end to an absolute monarchy that had ruled for nearly one thousand years. In The Giant of The French Revolution, David Lawday reveals the larger-than-life figure who joined the fray at the storming of the Bastille in 1789 at twenty-nine--and was dead five years later. Danton's impassioned speeches drove reformers to action and kept the Revolution alive at the moment when it risked collapse. But he lost his grip against Robespierre's Reign of Terror, becoming another of its victims under the guillotine. In vivid, novelistic prose worthy of a Shakespearean tragedy, Lawday leads us from Danton's humble roots to the streets of Paris, where this political legend acted on the operatic stage of the Revolution that altered Western civilization.

Author: David Lawday
Publisher: Grove Press
Published: 07/12/2011
Pages: 304
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.80lbs
Size: 8.40h x 5.70w x 1.30d
ISBN13: 9780802145413
ISBN10: 0802145418
BISAC Categories:
- Biography & Autobiography | Historical
- History | Europe | France

About the Author
Educated at Oxford, David Lawday is a writer and journalist who spent twenty years as a correspondent for The Economist. The author of Napoleon's Master: A Life of Prince Talleyrand, he now lives in Paris with his French wife.