Am I being punished? Is it too much to ask of historical fiction that more than one, 'safe' perspective be presented? Diana Norman's novel, the last of three, is a European-History-by-Numbers affair worthy of Hollywood, belabouring under the author's many politically correct rants. The standard plot ('plucky' heroine ventures into danger to rescue those she loves) skips from soapbox to soapbox - slavery, female suffrage, equality ... I believe vegetarianism was even thrown in for good measure. Mrs Norman is far from subtle, and employs heroine Philippa to comment on the injustice every other paragraph: 'rights' and 'women' are her definitive articles. Stock characters occasionally play the devil's advocate - Makepeace 'Missus' Hedley promotes the usual cliches and jokes about Irishmen until she falls in love with one, and Ffoulkes the nobleman is shown as impotent and ridiculous for daring to suggest that he and his League rescue people and not privilege.

Andrew Ffoulkes is a character 'borrowed' from the Scarlet Pimpernel series by Baroness Orczy, but it is a mere passing nod: Orczy's Ffoulkes is a good and sensible man, putting his friends first, whereas Norman's parody, suitably bumped up the peerage from baronet to baron, is a mere figurehead and love interest for the tedious heroine ('as headstrong as Makepeace had ever been; and as freedom loving'. No strings on this puppet.)

Diana Norman's scale of humanity runs something like this, from top to bottom: Irish women, women, Irish men, working men, republican men, aristocratic men raised by Makepeace or fighting for women's rights, ethnic minorities, actors, aristocrats. All those possessed of wealth or a title, unless they use this unfair advantage to support the 'cause du jour', are selfish, spineless and useless, but may be used for comic relief. Any men who don't recognise that women are superior, and will gain the right to vote in a hundred or so years, are bullies; men who let women and Irishmen rescue them have potential.

The social history lecture delivered as a subtext drags the action and the characters down; dialogue and introspection are peppered with feminist, middle-class diatribes about the sad state of eighteenth century England; even the French Revolution at its most bloodthirsty and brutal is to be applauded as a sort of political 'no pain, no gain'. A patronising subplot is made of the emanicpation of slaves, merely to show how liberal Makepeace and her daughter are - the instant conversion to the cause of most of London after an am-dram production in a disused theatre is ironically undermined by Makepeace's Irish lover presenting her with a slave mother and child *as a gift*, but at least Mrs Norman can say she set that wrong to rights.

A light narrative style and colourful characters - bar Philippa - are drowned out by the constant tubthumping of the author, and I'm only glad that I didn't buy the first two books in the Makepeace trilogy. ( )