McPhee is one of the doyens of Australian historical writing and an eminent historian of the French Revolution, a field that is well established in Australia and New Zealand. The works of Lyons and Rose about Napoleon Bonaparte and Gracchus Babeuf and the Enragés are classical references.1 McPhee’s Liberty or Death is in that tradition: It is a clear and eminently readable account of an event, the coming of which was widely expected and of which the dénouement shocked everyone.
The particular talent of this book is to move easily and at every turn from the particular to the general, with often surprising results. McPhee is as comfortable writing about the Aude and the Pyrénés, a part of France that he knows perfectly well, as he is writing about Australasia. Witness his narrative of the French expedition of 1791 under Bruny d’Entrecasteaux, which was sent to search for the...