Citizens cover art

Citizens

Chronicle of the French Revolution

 Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Citizens

By: Simon Schama
Narrated by: Sara Powell
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £23.99

Buy Now for £23.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

In this New York Times best seller, award-winning author Simon Schama presents an ebullient country, vital and inventive, infatuated with novelty and technology - a strikingly fresh view of Louis XVI's France.

One of the great landmarks of modern history publishing, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution is the most authoritative social, cultural and narrative history of the French Revolution ever produced.

©2019 Simon Schama (P)2021 Audible, Ltd Europe France Military French Revolution Thought-Provoking Middle Ages Socialism War Imperialism

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Lancaster and York cover art
The Thirty Years War cover art
A History of Britain: Volume 1 cover art
Crown and Country: A History of England through the Monarchy cover art
The Anarchy cover art
The Birth of Classical Europe cover art
The Norman Conquest cover art
The Barber of Seville cover art
The Brothers Karamazov [Naxos AudioBooks Edition] cover art
Anna Karenina cover art
Queens of the Conquest cover art
Thomas Paine and the Clarion Call for American Independence cover art
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich cover art
Devil-Land cover art
The Sound and the Fury cover art
Devils cover art
All stars
Most relevant
The language is a lot more convoluted than History of Britain, which meant that the story was harder to stay engaged with.

Team that with the pauses for dramatic effect or sometimes even just an upcoming noun of the narrator and this was a lot less than I'd hoped it would be.

Re-listening might help the story so I'll try that, but it won't help the narration which I already had on x 1.2 just so the pauses were a bit more manageable.

Why so many dramatic pauses?

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A brilliant account of the French Revolution. Clear explanations and excellent information throughout the book.

Fantastic

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The narrator didn’t vary her voice much. The story was good and covered the facts.

France revolution

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The definitive book on the Revolution. Would recommend to anyone wanting to get an understanding of what happens and why.

Excellent

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Brilliant reading of a sweeping history. Lots of detail, as well as vast perspective. Brings to life the violence and hate of the years. Scary.

They are all mad but fascinating

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews