FACTUAL
The Things We Forgot to Remember
Sunday 30 April 2006 13:30-14:00 (Radio 4 FM)
Michael Portillo presents a series which revisits the great moments of history to discover that they often conceal other events of equal, but forgotten, importance.
Michael visits France, a land defined and shaped by the Revolution of 1789. Think of the Revolution and we think of the Guillotine, the tumbrils, the rivers of blood and the Paris mob, manipulated by Robespierre.
But, could it be that generations of French historians and the political needs of a nation have helped us to forget the most bloody and morally inconvenient saga of the Revolutionary period? Michael travels deep into rural France to dig up some difficult memories that have nothing at all to do with liberty, equality or fraternity.
