Napoleon
The rollercoaster ride of the world’s most reckless investor
The Korean-born Masayoshi Son – who lost $58.6 billion in 2000 – has a fascination with Napoleon, compares himself to Genghis Khan and is now reinventing himself as a futurist
Following Napoleon: my exile in St Helena
St Helena In an attempt to escape from the world, I have come with friends to St Helena. It is quite…
The best of this year’s gardening books
Authors reviewed include Jinny Blom on design, Jenny Joseph on scented plants, Maury C. Flannery on herbaria and Francis Pryor on his Fenland haven
Graham Robb deserves to be a French national treasure
Philip Hensher is enthralled by Graham Robb’s evocative new history of France
New tactics are needed for the wars of the future
The strategic bankruptcy of the West has twice so far this century demanded that our brave soldiers risk their bodies…
Don’t ask a historian what history is
E.H. Carr’s 1961 book What is History? has cast a long shadow over the discipline. I recall being assigned to…
Fiction’s most famous Rifleman returns — and it’s miraculous he’s still alive
It has been 15 years since the last Richard Sharpe novel, and it’s a pleasure to report that fiction’s most…
How Macron was outfoxed by a dead Napoleonic general
Skeletons don’t always lurk in cupboards, some of them hide under dance floors waiting for a particularly rousing party to…
How Napoleon changed the world
Two hundred years ago today, Napoleon Bonaparte closed his eyes for the final time. A man born to relative obscurity…
Kubrick's Napoleon – the greatest movie never made
Theo Zenou on Kubrick’s fascination with the fallen Emperor
Macron's Napoleon complex
May 5th this year will be the two hundredth anniversary of Napoleon’s death on Saint Helena, the tiny island in…
Toussaint Louverture: the true hero of Haiti
Toussaint Louverture’s ‘crazy dream’ for Haiti has still to be realised, says Amy Wilentz
The age of chivalry was an age of devilry
Agatha Christie’s spirit must be loving this poisonous new historical entertainment. Eleanor Herman has already enjoyed the success of Sex…
Books of the year – part one
Andrew Motion Short stories seem to fare better in the US than the UK, and among this year’s rich crop,…
![Giving the famous V-sign at the opening of RAAF headquarters, Croydon, 1948 [Getty]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/churchill.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
Andrew Roberts’s generous new biography of the man who saved us in our darkest hour, Churchill reviewed
Churchill must be the most written-about figure in public life since Napoleon Bonaparte (a subject, incidentally, to which Andrew Roberts…
On the run from Corunna: Now We Shall be Entirely Free, by Andrew Miller, reviewed
There is only one Andrew Miller. In the 20 years since his debut novel Ingenious Pain won both the James…
The best and most extensive exhibition on Napoleon in three decades
The Musée de l’Armée at Les Invalides in Paris has a new exhibition that I believe to be the best…
‘The finest architectural delusion in the world’
It took the madness of genius to build such a wonderful impossibility. Patrick Marnham reviews a delightful new literary guide to Venice
The ruthless Romanovs’ horrible history
It’s hard to tell at times who came off worst in Romanov Russia — the tsar or his subjects, says Adam Zamoyski
The Holy Roman Empire has been much maligned
The Holy Roman Empire has been much maligned over the centuries. In fact it worked remarkably well, says Jonathan Steinberg
A short history of statue-toppling
Sculptural topplings provide an index of changing times, says Martin Gayford
War & Peace is actually just an upmarket Downton Abbey
Gosh what a breath of fresh air was Andrew Davies’s War & Peace adaptation (BBC1, Sundays) after all the stale…
Puccini’s villain as swashbuckling hero
You don’t need to know the opera Tosca to understand and enjoy this book about Puccini’s most notorious villain, Vitellio…
France’s favourite bedtime story: a sanitised version of the French Revolution
The great conundrum of French history is the French Revolution, or rather, the sequence of revolutions, coups and insurrections during…
