Mark Steel Speech

[livviebway.livejournal.com]

I know there are a lot of people here who enjoy Mark Steel's "Vive la Révolution!" so I hope you'll enjoy this. It's a video of him giving a lecture presenting the book, so we get the stand up history of the Revolution actually as stand up!

Mark Steel speaks about the French Revolution

Comments

[jesta-ariadne.livejournal.com]

Eee, thanks for this link! I'd heard him speak a little on the radio, but only in bits and pieces. Great stuff. Even though he attributes a Desmoulins quote to Danton!! *gasp* ...yes, that does seem to be the single point of accuracy that I care about right now ^^;;

[livviebway.livejournal.com]

I know, I heard that and was like "Ahh! You robbed Camille of his Jesus quote!" But I guess since he'd introduced Danton a little more than Camille and rather than expecting a random American audience to keep all those revolutionaries straight, he just gave the quote to Danton.

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

Haven't had time to look at the videos yet, but does anyone else find it ironic that one of the commenters feels guilty for listening to this instead of reading Schama or Doyle? Sadly, neither of them--though Doyle is marginally better than Schama--are any more accurate than Mark Steel. >__>

[livviebway.livejournal.com]

Throughout the speech he is constantly hating on Schama. I love it.

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

It sounds brilliant. I'll have to wait to read it until I'm at a computer that's not in a library though. D:

[jonahmama.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much for posting this! It's so awesome to actually hear it in his own voice (as opposed to just reading it). He is absolutely hilarious!

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

I hate to say it, but he does make rather a lot of mistakes--most of them minor, happily enough. But he tends to oversimplify to the point of getting things wrong, which is exactly the unprofessional technique that I criticize where people like Schama are concerned. (To avoid hypocrisy I'm afraid I must point it out here, despite the fact that Mark Steel is both entertaining, right about many things, and on "my side," as it were. *sighs* It's just the Anglo-American historians generally--no matter how good they are, their French equivalents are just better. Well, excluding the very worst, who are about equally bad no matter where they're from or what language they speak.)