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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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A Tale of Two Cities
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(1859, after monthly publication that year in All the Year Round) Novel by *Dickens, with illustrations by *Phiz, which begins with one of the best-known opening passages in the language: 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness...'. The time is that of the *French Revolution, the cities are London and Paris. The story centres on Dr Manette, freed after 18years of wrongful imprisonment in the Bastille; and on his daughter Lucie, married in London to a French aristocrat, Charles Darnay, but loved from afar by Sydney Carton.
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Her husband goes to France to rescue a family servant but is arrested and condemned to death. He is saved at the last moment when Carton, who fortunately looks very much like him, takes his place on the scaffold. Carton's final thoughts end the book with a sentence almost as famous as its opening: 'It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.'
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