Tom Holland

speaker

53,930 appearances 202 recordings 9 series first heard Sep 2024 last heard yesterday

Tom Holland’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 93 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 11.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

The Rest Is History · 708. The Terror: The Reign of Robespierre (Part 2) · 23 Sep 2026 podcast

All of that. matched

And to reframe it as a kind of formal state policy. matched

But just to reiterate, even this is still fundamentally an attempt at crisis management. matched

It's an emergency measure. matched

It's a response to the crisis that is overwhelming the revolution. matched

I mean, you might say literally a blood bath, that the blood washes away the taints of monarchy and aristocracy and superstition, and that you have to have the blood bath so that something pure and better can emerge from it. matched

And matched

This is quite a minority position in the beginning of 1793, but it will become increasingly influential. matched

And the person who is most associated with it, probably the most famous or maybe notorious figure in the whole French Revolution, matched

was the one revolutionary that was name-checked by Mrs. Thatcher in that interview with Le Monde, and who on the 5th of September, when Barrère proclaimed terror the order of the day, was actually the president of the convention, and that is Maximilien Robespierre. matched

So people can probably have a sense of what he looks like. matched

He is, in 1793, 35 years old. matched

He is short. matched

He is slender. matched

He is pale in his appearance. matched

He's compared by one contemporary to a cat that at some time he looks like a domestic tabby, at other times like a fierce tiger. matched

than anybody else. matched

Yeah. matched

So he becomes the face of the terror, both when it is being prosecuted and in the wake of it. matched

And I mean, on the one hand, I mean, fewer people die in the terror than are killed in the British army on the first day of the song. matched

Showing 801–820 of 53,930 · page 41 of 2697