There is a scene in Gustave Flaubert’s novel Sentimental Education that one cannot read without turning one’s mind to today. Set against the backdrop of the 1848 revolutions in Europe, it tells the story of the romantic and intellectual wanderings of the earnest but capricious young Frédéric Moreau. In the exhilarating world of the newborn Second Republic, Moreau and his Parisian social circle flirt with high idealism about politics and international affairs while jostling for female attention, intellectual fulfilment, sources of stable income and, of course, their inheritance.

Prof John Bew CMG

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