Robert Stewart

‘Happiness is a new idea in Europe,’ the austere, implacable revolutionary Louis de Saint-Just wrote in 1791, as events in France were moving swiftly towards the establishment of a republic and the onset of Terror. The French Revolution was (if we prefer not to go back so far as the Renaissance) the cradle of modernity. It carried the aspirations of those reformers who as the 18th century progressed turned their backs on religion and the promise of an eternal afterlife as the hope of sinful man and looked for ways to improve the lot of humanity in the here and now. French philosophes and English Utilitarians made war on superstition and prejudice and sought to promote ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number’.

What is one to make of this little book? There is much that is good in it, about new handguns, their use in crime and warfare and their role as fashionable accessories (notably in portraiture) of the rich and proud; about the ‘spinning’ rife in Renaissance pamphlet wars; and about that age’s wantonly cruel methods of torture and execution. But does it make sense? Its central contention, that the assassination in 1584 of William of Orange was a landmark in history because it was carried out with a pistol, is more asserted than argued and it remains highly dubious.

Most biographies are written against a sketchy background of historical events drawn with just enough broad strokes of the brush to provide context for a life. Martin Crowe’s book, apart from the affecting last chapters on the autumn of Schindler’s life, is just the opposite. The milieu in which Oskar Schindler, the famous saviour of Krakow ghetto Jews during the Holocaust, operated is presented in exhaustive and brightly lit detail, while Schindler himself haunts the pages as a shadowy figure, elusive to the eye. The explanation is twofold. Crowe’s indefatigability as a researcher is beyond question. But Schindler was a minor figure in the great scheme of Nazi things and the evidence on which to build a biography is flimsy and bafflingly inconclusive.

The Age of Napoleonby Alistair HorneWeidenfeld & Nicolson, £14.99, pp. 182, ISBN 029760791X More words have been written about Napoleon than about any other historical figure, even Abraham Lincoln. Whether he betrayed, or carried on, the French Revolution is a question that agitates historians. Certainly the seeds of the French urge to mastery over Europe were sown before Napoleon swept the Directory aside and installed himself as the autocrat of France. By 1807, having routed the Austrians and Prussians at Jena and Austerlitz and made peace with Alexander I of Russia at Tilsit, he commanded the Continent. One enemy remained, but after the destruction of the French navy at Trafalgar the ambition to conquer Great Britain lay in ruins.

The Ancient Olympicsby Nigel SpiveyOUP, £17.99, pp. 264, ISBN 0192804332Olympics in Athens 1896: The Invention of the Modern Olympic Gamesby Michael Llewellyn SmithProfile, £16.99, pp. 290, ISBN 186197342X So politics should be kept out of sports? Tell that to the Greeks. Two absorbing new books about the ancient Olympic Games, each crammed with information about the sporting events themselves, abundantly demonstrate that the athletic contexts represented far more than sporting prowess. Stephen Miller’s richly detailed study, beautifully illustrated, is an examination of the whole of Greek culture and the role that athletics, games and festivals played in the moulding of Greek literature, vase painting, democracy and politics.

‘For his part, she filled a significant void in his human intercourse (he had been happy when he found the intimacy of their letters was at once transferred to the vocal).’ Further down the page: ‘He had had Emma Lucie promise to keep watch on her … and to take whatever measures were necessary, in his name, should there be the slightest sign of indigency.’ ‘He’ is cavalryman Matthew Hervey, now starring in his sixth Allan Mallinson novel, and he ought to speak better. He is given, after all, to quoting from Shakespeare and Scriptures. Hervey, as the hero of adventure romances is supposed to be, is virtuous, brave, sensitive and loyal.

In 1743 John Breads, a butcher, stabbed to death Allen Grebell in the declining Cinque port town of Rye on the east Sussex coast. Grebell was the brother-in-law of James Lamb, the mayor who lived in the town’s big house, Lamb House, that was later to be home to Henry James and E. F. Benson. Paul Monod has chosen that murder as a peg on which to hang his history of the town from the Civil War to the mid-18th century. The Grebell-Lamb interest was the cornerstone of the Whig oligarchy that had come to rule Rye. Can Breads’ story tell us something about the progress of Rye from the failure, amid the religious turbulence of 17th-century politics, of Puritan reformers to institute the rule of the godly to the ascendancy of the Whigs?

The Enterprise of England, the name given by His Most Catholic Majesty, Philip II of Spain, to the attempted overthrow of Queen Elizabeth I and the conquest of England, was part of a great plan. In 1588, when the Spanish Armada set sail for the English Channel, Philip already controlled the greater part of the accessible globe. But Europe was divided into Protestant and Roman Catholic camps and the Calvinist Spanish Netherlands were in revolt against rule from Madrid. If Philip could bring England back to Rome and, by taking possession of the powerful Tudor navy, gain the means to subdue the Dutch rebels, the Counter-Reformation and the Spanish Crown might carry all Europe before them.