Clement Shorter, Napoleon in his own defence (London, 1910)
Clement Shorter was a self-made man who led a successful career in journalism. Indeed he not only founded The Tatler in 1901 but was also editor of various publications, including the Illustrated London News and the English Illustrated Magazine. He was also founder editor of The Sphere, a publication to which he contributed frequent articles amongst other figures on Napoleon. Napoleon in his own defence was published in 1910 as a companion to his earlier Napoleon and his fellow-travellers, (1908) Cassel (London) which included most notably William Warden's text on Napoleon on St Helena (1817), read and descried by Napoleon himself. Shorter's own words (Napoleon in his own defence, pp. x and xi) on Napoleon reveal his programme (if such it was) in publishing the two books and articles, namely: “Granted that Napoleon was at heart a thorough despot, whose point of view would now be intolerable, we may still be content to survey the permanent work he did on behalf of liberal ideals, and to contrast him with the Alexanders and Ferdinands, the George the Fourths and Louis the Eighteenths who afflicted the European peoples after his destruction.” His opening essay is thus very much in defence of Napoleon. The following text in the book, Letters from the Cape, (themselves a reply to Warden and correctly attributed to Napoleon) come next, followed by Theodore Hook's Napoleon in St Helena. Hook was a hired pen, celebrated wit, successful novelist and hoaxer who had penned the pro-British government tract Facts illustrative regarding British treatment of Napoleon on St Helena, which was to receive a rebuttal by no less than Barry O'Meara, Napoleon's doctor (and supporter and apologist) on St Helena. Indeed, Hook was so conservative in his politics that he was made editor of the very patriotic and anti Whig publication John Bull – some said he even typified the British type figure. The appendix to Napoleon in his own defence offers letters by T. H. Brooke, Secretary to the Governor of St Helena – previously published in Shorter's newspaper, The Sphere, in 1904 (10th and 17th September).
Source
Dictionary of National Biography