Napoleon
All that was bravest and best: William Miller, forgotten Victorian hero of South American independence
A meticulous account masquerading as adventure story of the life of the baker’s son from Kent who became a brilliant military tactician and soldier pivotal in the struggle against slavery and imperialism
Romantic fantasies of the French in India
A cottage industry of counterfactual history emerged in 19th-century France catering for those mourning India’s ‘loss’ after successive defeats by the British
Confection of sex, bad history and nonsense: Apple TV+’s Carême reviewed
Antonin Carême was known as the ‘chef of kings and the king of chefs’. His patrons and employers included Talleyrand,…
‘Death is a very poor painter’: the 19th-century craze for plaster casts
Bourgeois homes in the early 19th century became ‘virtual museums of death’, with models of heroes jostling replicas of the hands and feet of lost loved ones
The rollercoaster ride of the world’s most reckless investor
The Korean-born Masayoshi Son – who lost $58.6 billion in 2000 – has a fascination with Napoleon, compares himself to Genghis Khan and is now reinventing himself as a futurist
Following Napoleon: my exile in St Helena
St Helena In an attempt to escape from the world, I have come with friends to St Helena. It is quite…
The best of this year’s gardening books
Authors reviewed include Jinny Blom on design, Jenny Joseph on scented plants, Maury C. Flannery on herbaria and Francis Pryor on his Fenland haven
From the Gauls to the Gilets Jaunes
Philip Hensher is enthralled by Graham Robb’s evocative new history of France
The changing face of war
The strategic bankruptcy of the West has twice so far this century demanded that our brave soldiers risk their bodies…
Doors to the past
E.H. Carr’s 1961 book What is History? has cast a long shadow over the discipline. I recall being assigned to…
A devilish assignment
It has been 15 years since the last Richard Sharpe novel, and it’s a pleasure to report that fiction’s most…
How Macron was outfoxed by a dead Napoleonic general
Skeletons don’t always lurk in cupboards, some of them hide under dance floors waiting for a particularly rousing party to…
How Napoleon changed the world
Two hundred years ago today, Napoleon Bonaparte closed his eyes for the final time. A man born to relative obscurity…
Napoleon dynamite
Theo Zenou on Kubrick’s fascination with the fallen Emperor
Macron’s Napoleon complex
May 5th this year will be the two hundredth anniversary of Napoleon’s death on Saint Helena, the tiny island in…
From slave to freedom fighter
Toussaint Louverture’s ‘crazy dream’ for Haiti has still to be realised, says Amy Wilentz
The age of chivalry was an age of devilry
Agatha Christie’s spirit must be loving this poisonous new historical entertainment. Eleanor Herman has already enjoyed the success of Sex…
Books of the year – part one
Andrew Motion Short stories seem to fare better in the US than the UK, and among this year’s rich crop,…
![Giving the famous V-sign at the opening of RAAF headquarters, Croydon, 1948 [Getty]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/churchill.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
Andrew Roberts’s generous new biography of the man who saved us in our darkest hour, Churchill reviewed
Churchill must be the most written-about figure in public life since Napoleon Bonaparte (a subject, incidentally, to which Andrew Roberts…
On the run from Corunna: Now We Shall be Entirely Free, by Andrew Miller, reviewed
There is only one Andrew Miller. In the 20 years since his debut novel Ingenious Pain won both the James…
The best and most extensive exhibition on Napoleon in three decades
The Musée de l’Armée at Les Invalides in Paris has a new exhibition that I believe to be the best…
Throned on her hundred isles
It took the madness of genius to build such a wonderful impossibility. Patrick Marnham reviews a delightful new literary guide to Venice
Autocracy tempered by strangulation
It’s hard to tell at times who came off worst in Romanov Russia — the tsar or his subjects, says Adam Zamoyski
Charlemagne’s legacy
The Holy Roman Empire has been much maligned over the centuries. In fact it worked remarkably well, says Jonathan Steinberg
