Versailles

Monday

Nina Power

How French absolutism powered a techno-progressive revolution

The Enlightenment is back. Despite the best efforts of the past decade of handwringing about cultural imperialism and wailing over machismo, money and majesty, the future keeps crashing in. The Science Museum has now laid its cards on the table with Versailles: Science and Splendour. Think gilt, not guilt. Is there anything in our lives that could compare to witnessing the first successfully grown pineapple? It’s marvellous, and unusual these days, to visit an exhibition and feel the colossal force of history without anyone bashing you over the head with infantile morality tales. Expanding on a 2010 display at the Palace itself, lead curator Anna Ferrari ought to be saluted

Tuesday

Owen Matthews

Few rulers can have rejoiced in a less appropriate sobriquet than Augustus the Strong

Augustus the Strong (1670-1733), Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, is often labelled one of the worst monarchs in European history. His reign is billed by Tim Blanning’s publishers as ‘a study in failed statecraft, showing how a ruler can shape history as much by incompetence as brilliance’. Yet this thorough and often hilarious study of Augustus’s life and times reveals these harsh headline words to be exaggerated. Indeed the man comes across as quite a good egg, as much sinned against as sinning. With disarming immodesty, Augustus described himself as: A lively fellow, carefree, showing from a young age that he was blessed with a strong body, a