Jeremy Jennings

The ambassador of ill-repute, Prince Talleyrand

Alexis de Tocqueville: a mediocre minister but a memoirist of genius

Jeremy Paxman’s memoir is a moving and witty account of a postwar upbringing and TV career, but we learn little of the man behind the persona

The President of the Republic is intelligent, good-humoured, and likeable, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that his time in office has been disastrous

‘Submission’ is a deeply unpleasant, dystopian novel, but something does ring true in this unlikely tale of an Islamist takeover in Paris

For anyone interested in the founding of the American Republic this work is indispensable reading

Adam Zomoyski’s Phantom Terrors is timely, as well as elegantly written

Andrew Roberts’s account of the life ‘Napoleon the Great’ is magisterial and beautifully written

Few events have so fascinated historians as the French Revolution. How could such a momentous and frightening experience, leading to the public execution of Louis XVI and the Reign of Terror, be explained? Jonathan Israel’s bold thesis is that, for the most part, the views of contemporary historians are “fundamentally incorrect”. The “strangest misconceptions” and “utterly unfounded myths” plague their accounts. There is, he therefore concludes, “an uncommonly urgent need for some very sweeping and drastic revision”.

Two rival concepts of liberty have their roots in medieval canon law and Anglo-Saxon England