Three-Book Edition: A Place of Greater Safety; Beyond Black; The Giant O’Brien
From the twice Man Booker Prize-winning author of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, a collection of three novels: A Place of Greater Safety, Beyond Black and The Giant, O’Brien.A Place of Greater Safety is a spellbinding, epic historical novel which recounts the stirring but blood-thirsty events of the French Revolution, as seen through the eyes of the Revolution’s three protagonists – Georges-Jacques Danton, Maximilien Robespierre and Camille DesmoulinsIn The Giant, O’Brien, Charles O’Brien, bard and giant, is led from Ireland to seek his fortune beyond the seas in England. The cynical are moved by his flights of romance; the craven stirred by his tales of epic deeds. But in London is famed surgeon, John Hunter, who buys dead men from the gallows and babies’ corpses by the inch – and he wants the Giant’s bones.In Beyond Black we meet Alison Hart – medium by trade. With her flat-eyed, flint-hearted sidekick, Colette, she tours the dormitory towns of London's orbital road, passing on messages from dead ancestors. But Alison's ability to communicate with spirits is a torment rather than a gift and behind her plump, smiling and bland public persona is a desperate woman.
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Hilary Mantel
Three-Book Edition
A Place of Greater Safety
Beyond Black
The Giant, O’Brien
About the Author
Hilary Mantel is the author of thirteen books, including A Place of Greater Safety, Beyond Black, and the memoir Giving Up the Ghost. Her two most recent novels, Wolf Hall and its sequel Bring Up the Bodies, have both been awarded the Man Booker Prize. Bring Up the Bodies also won the Costa Book of the Year.
Also by Hilary Mantel
Bring Up the Bodies
Wolf Hall
Beyond Black
Every Day is Mother’s Day
Vacant Possession
Eight Months on Ghazzah Street
Fludd
A Place of Greater Safety
A Change of Climate
An Experiment in Love
The Giant, O’Brien
Learning to Talk
Non-fiction
Giving Up the Ghost
Table of Contents
Hilary Mantel
A Place of Greater Safety
Contents
I. Life as a Battlefield (1763–1774)
I. The Theory of Ambition (1784–1787)
II. Rue Condé: Thursday Afternoon (1787)
III. Maximilien: Life and Times (1787)
IV. A Wedding, a Riot, a Prince of the Blood (1787–1788)
VI. Last Days of Titonville (1789)
II. Liberty, Gaiety, Royal Democracy (1790)
IV. More Acts of the Apostles (1791)
II. Danton: His Portrait Made (1791)
III. Three Blades, Two in Reserve (1791–1792)
IV. The Tactics of a Bull (1792)
III. The Visible Exercise of Power (1792–1793)
V. A Martyr, a King, a Child (1793)
VIII. Imperfect Contrition (1793)
XI. The Old Cordeliers (1793–1794)
Dedication
To Clare Boylan
Author’s Note
THIS IS A NOVEL about the French Revolution. Almost all the characters in it are real people and it is closely tied to historical facts – as far as those facts are agreed, which isn’t really very far. It is not an overview or a complete account of the Revolution. The story centres on Paris; what happens in the provinces is outside its scope, and so for the most part are military events.
My main characters were not famous until the Revolution made them so, and not much is known about their early lives. I have used what there is, and made educated guesses about the rest.
This is not, either, an impartial account. I have tried to see the world as my people saw it, and they had their own prejudices and opinions. Where I can, I have used their real words – from recorded speeches or preserved writings – and woven them into my own dialogue. I have been guided by a belief that what goes on to the record is often tried out earlier, off the record.
There is one character who may puzzle the reader, because he has a tangential, peculiar role in this book. Everyone knows this about Jean-Paul Marat: he was stabbed to death in his bath by a pretty girl. His death we can be sure of, but almost everything in his life is open to interpretation. Dr Marat was twenty years older than my main characters, and had a long and interesting pre-revolutionary career. I did not feel that I could deal with it without unbalancing the book, so I have made him the guest star, his appearances few but piquant. I hope to write about Dr Marat at some future date. Any such novel would subvert the view of history which I offer here. In the course of writing this book I have had many arguments with myself, about what history really is. But you must state a case, I think, before you can plead against it.
The events of the book are complicated, so the need to dramatize and the need to explain must be set against each other. Anyone who writes a novel of this type is vulnerable to the complaints of pedants. Three small points will illustrate how, without falsifying, I have tried to make life easier.
When I am describing pre-revolutionary Paris, I talk about ‘the police’. This is a simplification. There were several bodies charged with law enforcement. It would be tedious, though, to hold up the story every time there is a riot, to tell the reader which one is on the scene.
Again, why do I call the Hôtel de Ville ‘City Hall’? In Britain, the term ‘Town Hall’ conjures up a picture of comfortable aldermen patting their paunches and talking about Christmas decorations or litter bins. I wanted to convey a more vital, American idea; power resides at City Hall.
A smaller point still: my characters have their dinner and their supper at variable times. The fashionable Parisian dined between three and five in the afternoon, and took supper at ten or eleven o’clock. But if the latter meal is attended with a degree of formality, I’ve called it ‘dinner’. On the whole, the people in this book keep late hours. If they’re doing something at three o’clock, it’s usually three in the morning.
