33:I[53470,["352","static/chunks/352-d982bf43a4fd8e87.js","4166","static/chunks/4166-8ca60d5be3e3329a.js","6874","static/chunks/6874-98a7f8268e192452.js","5784","static/chunks/5784-415ddf12556d8261.js","7399","static/chunks/7399-dff34d5dd349a4d3.js","3063","static/chunks/3063-7cbe9e548a8d185f.js","6164","static/chunks/6164-e17a771cf2d83f17.js","253","static/chunks/253-da62e547742b6bee.js","1215","static/chunks/1215-07120a8c77b23d78.js","5607","static/chunks/5607-9fccc14341fbf147.js","9164","static/chunks/9164-5de9886fbddf12ff.js","6252","static/chunks/6252-11d0c66f47fdb9a4.js","3204","static/chunks/3204-be90432f7d4d4f28.js","3470","static/chunks/3470-895a517adcd16c6c.js","4573","static/chunks/4573-7bdc349142f57f96.js","5326","static/chunks/app/(storefront)/(main)/collections/%5Bhandle%5D/page-c983ad99b8304abc.js"],"default"] 34:T7c8,

On 5th May 1789, the French royal family processed in pomp and splendour through a room at the Palace of Versailles to the sound of applause and cheers. Exactly five months later, the palace was stormed and the royals left, surrounded by the decapitated heads of their bodyguards.

The Last Summer at Versailles tells the story of what happened in those five months as a political thriller as well as, perhaps unexpectedly, a mirror to the present.

Among the hundreds in the palace chamber on 5th May, there were six people – three women and three men – who will be the lenses through which this book tells its story. They were Queen Marie-Antoinette; a socialite Gabrielle, Duchess of Polignac; Madame Jeanne Campan, a bookworm who worked in the palace as a maid; the Marquis de Lafayette, a hero of the American War of Independence; the Comte de St.-Priest, a frustrated diplomat with liberal sympathies, and a radical journalist with a bad stutter called Camille Desmoulins.

Politics and personality were central to what happened that summer and they explain the selection of the six main figures in The Last Summer at Versailles.

Books by Gareth Russell

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