A Place Of Greater Safety

PENGUIN BOOKS A PLACE OF GREATER SAFETY Hilary Mantel 'Concentrating on the tortuously interwoven relationship between its three most important protagonists, Robespierre, Danton and Desmoulins, Hilary Mantel has pulled off the apparently impossible ... an ambitious, gripping epic ... The host of minor characters and the swirling mob who form the necessary background to the story are never lost from sight, but are expertly marshalled on and off the bloodstained stage ... a tour de force of the historical imagination' - Vogue Intriguing ... She has grasped what made these young revolutionaries - and with them the French Revolution -tick ... This is the perfect complement to Simon Schama's history of the French Revolution, Citizens'- Independent 'A formidably talented novelist... She has seen deeply into her characters and their involvements with one another, and makes them live for us, with vivid invented detail, day by day, as they are battered or seduced by public events- London Review of Books 'Mantel's grasp both of detail and the complex sweep of events is quite remarkable ... "her people" are firmly rooted in physical and historical reality ... Little is known of the personal lives of most revolutionary leaders before 1789, and after they became famous, they lived constantly in the public eye. Yet Mantel has managed to get inside them by feeling her way through their writings, families and, quite brilliandy, their women' – The Times Literary Supplement "Much, much more than an historical novel, this is an addictive study of power, and the price that must be paid for it... a triumph' – Cosmopolitan ABOUT THE AUTHOR Hilary Mantel was born in Derbyshire in 1952, and has lived and worked in Africa and the Middle East In 1987 she was awarded the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize for travel writing. Her previous novels, all published by Penguin, are Every Day is Mother's Day, Vaunt Possession, Eight Months on Ghazzab Street a nd Fludd. Hilary Mantel is married and lives in Berkshire. A Plate of Greater Safety was the winner of the 1992 Sunday Express Book of the Year Award. HILARY MANTEL A PLACE OF GREATER SAFETY PENGUIN BOOKS PENGUIN BOOKS Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Boob Ltd, 27 Wrights Line, London W8 STZ, England Penguin Book USA Inc. 37S Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. USA Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Atom Avenue, Toronto, Ontaiio, Canada M4V 3B2 Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, 182-190 Wirau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand Penguin Book Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex. England First published by Viking 1W2 Published in Penguin Book 1993 13S79108642 Copyright Hilary Mantel, 1992 All rights reserved The moral right of the author has been asserted Printed in England by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-told, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition Including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser Contents Author's Note ix Cast of Characters xi PART ONE I. Life as Battlefield (1765-1774) a II. CorpseCandle (1774-17 80) 30 III. At Maitre Vinot's (1780) 51 5 PART TWO I. The Theory of Ambition (17841787) 61 II. Rue Conde: Thursday Afternoon (1787) 78 III. Maximilien: Life and Times (1787) IV. A Wedding, a Riot, a Prince of the Blood 98 (1787-1788) 111 V. A New Profession (1788)