In the September edition of New English Review, our favorite doctor reflects on the French would-be radicals of May 1968 after coming across a book actually critical of the upper-middle class revolutionary leftists of that era.

Normally, it is the supporters of and participants in the so-called revolution who attract the most attention; memoirists tend to congratulate themselves on the generosity of their own impulses at the time, even if they now acknowledge that the revolution wasn’t really a revolution at all, and that perhaps they were wanting in wisdom in certain respects. This book emphasises that, on the contrary, the events were not just a manifestation of youthful high spirits and supposed idealism, but often ugly and destructive.