Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts

By Andrew Roberts

The definitive biography of the nice soldier-statesman via the New York Times bestselling writer of The typhoon of War

Austerlitz, Borodino, Waterloo: his battles are one of the maximum in historical past, yet Napoleon Bonaparte used to be way over an army genius and astute chief of guys. Like George Washington and his personal hero Julius Caesar, he was once one of many maximum soldier-statesmen of all times.

Andrew Roberts's Napoleon is the 1st glossy biography to exploit the new book of Napoleon's thirty-three thousand letters, which appreciably rework our figuring out of his personality and motivation. finally we see him as he was once: protean multitasker, decisive, unusually prepared to forgive his enemies and his errant spouse Josephine. Like Churchill, he understood the strategic significance of telling his personal tale, and his memoirs, dictated from exile on St. Helena, grew to become the only bestselling booklet of the 19th century.

An award-winning historian, Roberts traveled to fifty-three of Napoleon's sixty conflict websites, found an important new records in data, or even made the lengthy journey through boat to St. Helena. he's as acute in his figuring out of politics as he's of army historical past. the following finally is a biography important of its topic: magisterial, insightful, superbly written, by way of one in all our most popular historians.

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She became the last woman to fall for Bodenheim’s charms. He quickly dragged her down to his level, and they slept on park benches or in abandoned buildings. He mocked her and sometimes beat her, but she remained doggedly by his side. They married in 1952. Ruth was friends with an unbalanced ex-convict named Harold Weinberg. On a bitterly cold evening in February 1954, she and Bodenheim took refuge in Weinberg’s room in a cheap hotel near the Bowery. Weinberg passed a bottle of whisky round, then started to make love to Ruth.

In 1779, having completed his apprenticeship, he was accepted into the recently established Royal Academy Schools, where he consolidated his artistic skills but railed against the fashionable oil painters of the day like Sir Joshua Reynolds (then the Royal Academy’s president), preferring the strong, clean lines of classical and Renaissance artists. He also set himself up as a commercial engraver, a trade he would practice for the rest of his life. In 1782, he married Catherine Boucher. She was illiterate, but he taught her how to read and write, and she became an assistant in his work and devoted companion to the end.

He kept it in an old grandfather clock case in an upper room of his house, along with other natural curiosities including a stuffed hedgehog and a starfish hanging from the ceiling. He was diligent about carrying out Hannah’s final request, and sometimes showed his unusual patient off to visitors (among them the young Thomas de Quincy). White would lead them to the clock case, which was kept upright, open a door at the top of it, lift a little curtain of cloth and reveal Hannah’s face, which was said to look perfectly lifelike.

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