Publications

Books to read over the summer 2001

This recent work covers the causes and effects of the conflicts and their place in the evolution of modern warfare. It explores and reappraises the most significant and controversial military ventures, including the war at sea and Napoleon’s campaigns of 1805-9, and demonstrates, in interspersed thematic sections, how incomplete our understanding of the struggle must […]

Reviewed by Alan Forrest of the University of York (UK) in the British periodical French History, vol. 12, no. 3, Sept. 1998.

Reviewed by John Merriman of Yale University (USA) in the British periodical French History, vol. 12, no. 3, Sept. 1998.

The arrival of an important prisoner forever changes the lives of the residents of the island of St. Helena. Napoleon, after his defeat at Waterloo, came to live in the family house of a young English girl on the island, and this novel for children gives a view of the great man, his life and […]

Some periods in the life of the Prince impérial His childhood, his place within Imperial propaganda, the fall of the Third Empire, the exile in England, and the departure for, and death in, South Africa.

Vivant Denon: a soldier/painter in the land of the Pharaohs Vivant Denon followed Bonapart on the Egyptian campaign and brought back some exceptional documents which sparked off a craze on all things Egyptian, known as ‘egyptomanie’. It was during this campaign that the Rosetta Stone was found by the French – it was not however […]

Railways, the product of the development of roads and canals in the XVIIIth century and the industrial revolution, were adopted by the French in the 1840's, with the large railway companies being founded in the 1850's. The driving spirit of liberalism of the Second Empire was broken on the wheel of the IIIrd Republic, as […]

A book which tells the story of the military careers of a handful of officers; humble citizens ennobled by the great epic of the history of the First Empire.