Press reviews

Danielle Kurtzleben, “Napoleon's conquest of Italy led to a copyright-fueled opera boom,” in Vox (24 October, 2014):  “…A new study provides evidence of how copyright laws inspire more and higher-quality artistic works. Michela Giorcelli and Petra Moser, Stanford University economists, studied the Italian opera scene from the late 1700s through 1900 and found that after […]

Jenny Uglow, “A time of battles – real and literary”, in The Guardian (24 October, 2014):  “…I've been following the lives of different people – farmers and builders, bankers and weavers, paupers and aristos – throughout the Napoleonic wars, as we have come to call them. The conflict lasted 22 years from 1793 to 1815, […]

Hugh Schofield, “Scandalous tales from the British embassy in Paris” on the BBC NEWS Magazine:   “…It's 200 years since the Duke of Wellington bought the grandiose Hotel de Charost in Paris, a few doors down from the Elysee palace. And if you want to get to know the secrets of a stately home, I […]

David Armitage, “Why politicians need historians,” in The Guardian (7 October, 2014):   “…For much of the last 40 years, historians on both sides of the Atlantic have been trained to detach themselves from the supposedly distorting imperatives of “relevance”. They have addressed their work to other historians more than to the wider public. When […]

“Andrew Roberts's Life of Napoleon is witty, humane and unapologetically admiring”: Review by Dan Jones in The Guardian (6 October, 2014):   “…Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France and by many people's reckoning the most brilliant general of modern times, is one of those who has most conspicuously failed to have greatness thrust upon him. This was not […]

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 […]

William Doyle reviews Andrew Roberts' “Napoleon the Great” in The Financial Times (3 October 2014):   “…Like other recent biographers Roberts draws on the new scholarly edition of Napoleon's general correspondence, now nearing completion, which offers a trove of reliable information. One thing that stands out from using this, repeatedly emphasised by Roberts, is how […]

Riccardo Benzoni, “Il culto di San Napoleone. Ricerche erudite nella Milano napoleonica”, available via Academia.edu: “…Nelle settimane che seguirono la ratifica apportata il 3 marzo 1806 dall'Arcivescovo di Milano Giovanni Battista Caprara in qualità di Legato a latere della Santa Sede a Parigi al decreto imperiale del 19 febbraio, con cui il governo francese aveva […]

“French History, Flawed Sparkler” (review of Napoleon the Great in The Economist, 20 September 2014):   “…Is another long life of Napoleon really necessary? On three counts, the answer given by Andrew Roberts's impressive book is an emphatic yes.   The most important is that this is the first single-volume general biography to make full […]

Review of Wellington: The Path to Victory, 1769-1814 by Dr Kevin Linch:   “…As Muir makes clear in his preface, his aim is a thorough re-assessment of Wellington's life, countering existing biographies of Wellington that have not done the man justice nor placed him in a proper context. This is no small task… At 672 […]