French 18th-century history

Emilie du Châtelet – a lone voice among Enlightenment thinkers

4 January 2025 9:00 am

The brilliant physicist’s warning to her contemporaries not to carry respect for great men to the point of idolatry fell on deaf ears

Was the French Revolution inevitable?

28 October 2023 9:00 am

It was clear for decades in France that unrest was steadily building before public anger finally exploded in the spring of 1789, says Ruth Scurr