1848 and all that

The Sunday Telegraph has this  brief notice about the paperback edition of Mike Rapport's 1848 (Abacus, £12.99)

The great historian Lewis Namier called 1848 the “seed-plot of history”. It was a year to rival 1776 (America) and 1789 (France), in which revolutions in favour of liberal democracy ripped across Europe, turning cities from Paris to Bucharest into political battlefields. The radical causes espoused and the conservative backlash that followed set the conditions for the history of Europe in the 20th century. Mike Rapport picks a judicious and vividly presented path through a complex year and skilfully juggles political thought and popular experience. Read alongside Victor Sebestyen’s Revolution 1989 – in a sense where the story ends. DJ