Mantel traces the story of the Revol In her version of events, Marat goes to Danton and Desmoulins with his idea of massacring the prisoners, and they are horrified at first, but eventually go along with it, although they come up with lists of people to be spared. His mother's body was shrouded in white, her back propped against cushions, her hair scraped from her forehead into a band.

She wrote it in the 1970s, when she was in her early twenties, but could not find a publisher for it until 1992, both because publishers were not interested in novels about the French Revolution and because they did not want to take a chance on a long book by an unknown author.A turning point in Robespierre’s views occurs with the September massacres in 1792, shortly after the fall of the monarchy, when many prisoners in Paris were massacred by the mob. As a young man, Desmoulins falls in love with Annette, the mother, who refuses to have sexual relations with him.

Mantel began writing the novel in 1975 and completed it in 1979, but was unable to find a publisher.

His father crosses the room and scoops him up, prizing his fingers away from the window frame to which he clings. Spoilers but only if you never knew the French Revolution = wholesale death and that real characters who lived 200+ years ago may be a little on the deceased side by now anyway.