Napoleon the Great reviewed by Andrew Hussey in The Observer (5 October 2014):
“…Sometimes, it seems in France as if the French have never really quite got over Napoleon Bonaparte. Certainly these days his imprint is still everywhere in Paris: Napoleon's stated ambition was to make Paris more beautiful than any city had ever been and to this end he commissioned the architects Fontaine and Percier to create new landscapes, destroying the old mansion houses that stood between the Tuileries and the Louvre, to reveal the Champs-Élysées as the widest and most magnificent avenue in Europe, symbolic of the nation's destiny and the military paths to glory…”