SOURCE: “The Fatal Cult of Revolution,” in Spectator, July 15, 1989, pp. 27–28.

In the following review of Citizens, Johnson commends Schama's “rich and readable narrative account” of the French Revolution, in particular his focus on the revolution's irrational ideology and violent extremes.

So far there has been a lacklustre response to the elaborate and expensive efforts by the French government to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution. Even in Paris there does not seem to be much enthusiasm. Why should there be? In our time we have had our fill of revolutions. The last one to be launched, as it were, from France was the Ayatollah's ‘Islamic Republic’. That bloodthirsty old man was allowed to return from his French exile to complete the destruction of the Shah, regarded in Paris as a British stooge. A decade and a million corpses later, what is there to show for it...