Napoleon’s Jailer: Lt. Gen. Sir Hudson Lowe. A life

This book is the first full-scale biography of Hudson Lowe – a remarkable fact, given the huge quantities of ink spilt in his disfavour – and it attempts to give a more balanced view of the man best known as Napoleon's Jailer. Although, it must be said  that Gregory's remarks concerning the 'guile and mendacity of his devious captive and his captive's adherents' leave us doubtful as to his lack of bias. However, here there is much to discover about Hudson Lowe: most notably, his remarkably successful military career pre-Saint Helena, and his key role with respect to the Prussians before Waterloo. The publishers remark: 'Without attempting to disguise Lowe's personal faults and limitations, Desmond Gregory has aimed at rehabilitating Lowe's reputation as a soldier and a writer who, as the record clearly shows, was something very much more than the the pseudovillain of St. Helena.' That being said, the final lines of the book are delightful and perhaps give the key to understanding why Saint Helena went so badly wrongh for Sir Hudson Lowe. Quoting the Marquess of Curzon, Gregory notes: '”Just as in the larger controversy over Napoleon himself, Sir Hudson Lowe was fundamentally in the right. At the same time he had the knack of doing the right thing in a very clumsy way… [a man] who even when he was right, as he usually was, succeeded in making people annoyed that he was not wrong”'!
 
Includes a bibliography and an index.
 
Desmond Gregory is an independent scholar, also the author of Napoleon's Italy (London: Associated University Press, 2001).