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© Quercus
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Description:
From the publishers:
On a cold December day in 1840 Parisians turned out in force to watch as the body of Napoleon was solemnly carried on a riverboat from Courbevoie on its final journey to the Invalides. The return of their long-dead Emperor's corpse from the Island of St Helena was a moment that Paris had eagerly awaited, though many feared that the memories stirred would serve to further destabilize a country that had struggled for order and direction since he had been sent into exile.
In this book, Alan Forrest, tells the remarkable story of how the son of a Corsican attorney became the most powerful man in Europe, a man whose charisma and legacy endured after his lonely death many thousands of miles from the country whose fate had become so entwined with his own. Along the way, Alan Forrest also cuts away the many layers of myth and counter myth that have grown up around Napoleon, a man who mixed history and legend promiscuously and, drawing on original research and his own background in French history, demonstrates that Napoleon was as much a product of his times as their creator.
From napoleon.org:
In this his recent biography on Napoleon, Alan Forrest, Professor of Modern History at the University of York (UK), has written an exceedingly readable account of the emperor. And by starting with a chapter on the Retour des Cendres, he leaves readers in no doubt that this is going to be a discussion on Napoleon and his legend. That being said, the actual real course of the emperor's life is nevertheless dealt with, both carefully and speedily – indeed this would be excellent for someone who had never read a Napoleonic book before. And the last chapter on Napoleon's "Life after Death" is neatly effective – though Napoleon III gets somewhat short shrift. If you haven't read a biography of Napoleon recently, this one's for you.
Napoleon.org recently completed a short but extremely interesting interview with Alan Forrest, in which he explained his take on the Napoleonic biography and discussed some of the challenges he faced in writing his new book.
Place and publisher: Quercus
Date of publication: 2011
Number of pages: 352
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