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Books

How a clumsy drummer started the 1848 revolutions

A review of Phantom Terror: The Threat of Revolution and the Repression of Liberty, 1789 – 1848, by Adam Zamoyski. This masterful history shows how secret policing arrested the development Europe

18 October 2014

9:00 AM

18 October 2014

9:00 AM

Phantom Terror: The Threat of Revolution and the Repression of Liberty, 1789–1848 Adam Zamoyski

William Collins, pp.569, £30, ISBN: 9780007282760

There are hundreds of resounding ideas and shrewd precepts in Adam Zamoyski’s temperate yet splendidly provocative Phantom Terror. This is the history of European ultra-reactionary repression and police espionage in the half-century after the overthrow of the French monarchy in 1789-93. The instability of popular opinion, the destructiveness of angry, ignorant populism and the wretchedness of timid, suppliant leadership are laid bare by him.

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