Robespierre is one of the most interesting figures of the French Revolution and this biography aims to bring clarity to his shadowy reputation. Robespierre did not act in a vacuum (the French Revolution is populated with a range of idealistic and nefarious figures), but Scurr's take is that he did possess a kind of self-confidence that permitted him to believe he was morally in the right even as his policies resulted in increasing deaths. I doubt this book will be (nor should it be) the final word on Robespierre, but it is an interesting take on his dramatic life. ( )

Scurr strikes a superlative balance between explanation and flow of history as she depicts how the social justice warrior ascends to national importance only to fall into state-sponsored terror in the name of defending the republic. She brings into the narrative Marat, Danton and the other actors in the French revolution. No more a paragraph is devoted to Charlette Corday, the assassin of Marat, and even less space to an unemployed captain of the artillery who bemoans how the king might have saved himself if he had mounted his horse and led. This biography moves smoothly while taking the time to go into depth of situations and character. ( )

Excellent. shows the strength of biography for getting across complexities of history. R's life makes for a clear narrative and a sense of who's on which side in the swirling tide.We learn also that R was no villain but pretty paranoid; he voted for abolition of the death penalty in the early days, but later deemed it necessary for dealing with "internal enemies". We also see the noose gradually tighteningfom the Declaration of rights which entailed an end to torture and cruel punishments until the climax where no evidence is required to condemn someone and there is no defence, no appel, and no punishment other than death. What is not clear is how this consummate political operator reached the pinnacle of absolute power, only to be overthrown within the year. seems absolute power is only relative. Score writes in vivid form with mastery of facts and background; slight flaw at the end where she dramatises R's scream from the scaffold and in the Coda from Wordsworth's Prelude, where she shows how mistaken W was about R - but this just leaves the reader with a So What? ( )

http://www.lonelymountain.net/books/nov08.html#scurrfp ( )

A well written and fascinating account of the life and career of this most famous and infamous of French revolutionaries. Robespierre is a fascinating man of contrasts. For much of his life, certainly before the Revolution and for a couple of years after the fall of the Bastille, his positive points predominate - a passion for justice and for the plight of the poor, as shown by his advocacy of the poor in many court cases when he was a simple lawyer in Arras, and by many of his speeches afterwards; and his radical and uncompromising democracy, an advanced phenomenon in the 18th century. It is only really from 1792, the fall of the monarchy and the suspension of the 1793 constitution before it ever came into effect, that we see the awful side of Robespierre - his singlemindedness becoming a complete personal identification of his own views with the interests of the Revolution, and an utterly and chillingly sincere belief therefore that those opposed to himself and, ipso facto, the Revolution must die - the title of this biography "Fatal Purity" is well chosen. The story from the arrest of the Girondins in June 1793 is the story of the fall and massacring of one faction after another until Robespierre's own fall and death in late July 1794. There are some sickening, horrific and tragic stories along the way, especially those of the prison massacres of September 1792, the separating of Marie Antoinette from her children, the execution of Camille Desmoulins's wife and the many poor and working class people who fell under the guillotine's blade - it was by no means aristocrats who were its most common victims as is commonly supposed. A great and tragic read. ( )