Thanks to Lucie de la Tour du Pin, the Pepys of her generation, France’s most momentous period of history comes to life in Dancing To The Precipice.
Caroline Moorehead’s evocative biography shows us an extraordinary woman living in extraordinary times. Written entirely from primary source material, it draws chiefly on her diaries, which record people, politics and intrigue, as well as the revealing minutiae of everyday life: food, work, clothes, children, sickness, manners and the like.
Lucie experienced the Court of Versailles, the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era. Her day-to-day writings illuminate those tumultuous years in a way that a standard work of history could not.