Revolutionary in spirit

A few years ago, a French reader congratulated me on my marvellous biography of Napoleon. Yes, I agreed, it’s a terrific read — an absolute blinder. But I had to be frank and reveal that, alas, I wasn’t Frank.

I confess to being a little envious of my approximate namesake, Frank McLynn. A hugely successful popular historian who has the freedom to write on just about any subject he damn well pleases: Marcus Aurelius, the Burma campaign, the battle of Hastings, Jung, the Wild West. He even has a sideline on Hollywood greats. With some two dozen books to his name, he has clearly grasped the baton from Christopher Hibbert. Such eclecticism should come at a price — and occasionally it does, if only a nominal one — but he keeps his many readers happy, and will do so again with his new book.

The Road Not Taken purports to ask how it is that Britain has avoided, as McLynn sees it, the type of full-blooded, ‘true’ revolution experienced in so many other countries (France, Russia, China, Mexico and Cuba, for example).