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Peter Watson is an intellectual historian, journalist, and the author of thirteen books, including Convergence; Ideas: A History; The Age of Atheists; The German Genius; The Medici Conspiracy; and The Great Divide. He has written for The Sunday Times, The New York Times, the Observer, and the Spectator. He lives in London.
'Majestic, ambitious . . . [Peter Watson] deserves admiration for the grace and agility with which he interlinks the development of a vigorous cultural identity and the seismic shifts of French national history, continually lurching between triumph and disaster. Impressive enough in its scope, authority and sprightliness to leave us wondering whether a French writer could have managed the task quite as deftly' * Literary Review * 'An encyclopaedic celebration of French intellectuals refusing to give up on universal principles . . . while remaining slim, bringing up well-behaved children and falling in love at every opportunity' * The Times * 'He unfurls his intellectual history in the form of vivid biographies . . . [an] engaging movement through time towards France's recent reckonings with extremism, exceptionalism and empire' * TLS *
