HILARY MANTEL
A Place of Greater Safety
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authors imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
Paperback edition first published by Harper Perennial 2007
First published in Great Britain by Viking 1992
Copyright © Hilary Mantel 1992
Hilary Mantel asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
PS section copyright © Sarah OReilly 2010
PS is a trademark of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN 9780007250554
Ebook Edition © NOVEMBER 2009 ISBN: 9780007354849
Version: 2019-07-29
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Praise
From the reviews of A Place of Greater Safety:
Crafty tensions, twists and high drama a bravura display of her endlessly inventive, eerily observant style
Times Literary Supplement
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
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
Intriguing She has grasped what made these young revolutionaries and with them the French Revolution tick This is the perfect complement to Simon Schamas history of the French Revolution, Citizens
Independent
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
Mantels 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 brilliantly, their women
Times Literary Supplement
Dedication
To Clare Boylan
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Note to Readers
Praise
Dedication
Authors Note
Cast of Characters
Map of Revolutionary Paris
PART ONE
I. Life as a Battlefield (17631774)
II. Corpse-Candle (17741780)
III. At Maître Vinots (1780)
PART TWO
I. The Theory of Ambition (17841787)
VI. Last Days of Titonville (1789)
VII. Killing Time (1789)
PART THREE
I. Virgins (1789)
II. Liberty, Gaiety, Royal Democracy (1790)
III. Ladys Pleasure (1791)
IV. More Acts of the Apostles (1791)
PART FOUR
I. A Lucky Hand (1791)
II. Danton: His Portrait Made (1791)
III. Three Blades, Two in Reserve (17911792)
IV. The Tactics of a Bull (1792)
V. Burning the Bodies (1792)
PART FIVE
I. Conspirators (1792)
II. Robespierricide (1792)
III. The Visible Exercise of Power (17921793)
IV. Blackmail (1793)
V. A Martyr, a King, a Child (1793)
VI. A Secret History (1793)
VII. Carnivores (1793)
VIII. Imperfect Contrition (1793)
IX. East Indians (1793)
X. The Marquis Calls (1793)
XI. The Old Cordeliers (17931794)
XII. Ambivalence (1794)
XIII. Conditional Absolution (1794)
Note
Keep Reading
Excerpt from Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
P.S. Ideas, interviews & features
About the author
A Kind of Alchemy
Life at a Glance
A Writing Life
Read on
Have You Read?
About the Author
Also by the Author
About the Publisher
Authors Note
THIS IS A NOVEL about the French Revolution. Almost all the characters in it are real people and it is closely tied to historical facts as far as those facts are agreed, which isnt really very far. It is not an overview or a complete account of the Revolution. The story centres on Paris; what happens in the provinces is outside its scope, and so for the most part are military events.
My main characters were not famous until the Revolution made them so, and not much is known about their early lives. I have used what there is, and made educated guesses about the rest.
This is not, either, an impartial account. I have tried to see the world as my people saw it, and they had their own prejudices and opinions. Where I can, I have used their real words from recorded speeches or preserved writings and woven them into my own dialogue. I have been guided by a belief that what goes on to the record is often tried out earlier, off the record.
There is one character who may puzzle the reader, because he has a tangential, peculiar role in this book. Everyone knows this about Jean-Paul Marat: he was stabbed to death in his bath by a pretty girl. His death we can be sure of, but almost everything in his life is open to interpretation. Dr Marat was twenty years older than my main characters, and had a long and interesting pre-revolutionary career. I did not feel that I could deal with it without unbalancing the book, so I have made him the guest star, his appearances few but piquant. I hope to write about Dr Marat at some future date. Any such novel would subvert the view of history which I offer here. In the course of writing this book I have had many arguments with myself, about what history really is. But you must state a case, I think, before you can plead against it.
The events of the book are complicated, so the need to dramatize and the need to explain must be set against each other. Anyone who writes a novel of this type is vulnerable to the complaints of pedants. Three small points will illustrate how, without falsifying, I have tried to make life easier.
When I am describing pre-revolutionary Paris, I talk about the police. This is a simplification. There were several bodies charged with law enforcement. It would be tedious, though, to hold up the story every time there is a riot, to tell the reader which one is on the scene.
Again, why do I call the Hôtel de Ville City Hall? In Britain, the term Town Hall conjures up a picture of comfortable aldermen patting their paunches and talking about Christmas decorations or litter bins. I wanted to convey a more vital, American idea; power resides at City Hall.
A smaller point still: my characters have their dinner and their supper at variable times. The fashionable Parisian dined between three and five in the afternoon, and took supper at ten or eleven oclock. But if the latter meal is attended with a degree of formality, Ive called it dinner. On the whole, the people in this book keep late hours. If theyre doing something at three oclock, its usually three in the morning.
I am very conscious that a novel is a cooperative effort, a joint venture between writer and reader. I purvey my own version of events, but facts change according to your viewpoint. Of course, my characters did not have the blessing of hindsight; they lived from day to day, as best they could. I am not trying to persuade my reader to view events in a particular way, or to draw any particular lessons from them. I have tried to write a novel that gives the reader scope to change opinions, change sympathies: a book that one can think and live inside. The reader may ask how to tell fact from fiction. A rough guide: anything that seems particularly unlikely is probably true.