'Glorious . . . Scurr has achieved something remarkable: a completely original book on a completely unoriginal subject. But then she is herself a truly remarkable writer, one of the most gifted non-fiction authors alive' Simon Schama, Financial Times




'Glorious . . . Scurr has achieved something remarkable: a completely original book on a completely unoriginal subject. But then she is herself a truly remarkable writer, one of the most gifted non-fiction authors alive' Simon Schama, Financial Times
A revelatory portrait of Napoleon to mark the 200th anniversary of his death, written for our own time, not in power politics or epic battles, but through his love of nature and the gardens that gave his revolutionary life its light and shade
Napoleon's gardens range from his childhood olive groves in Corsica, to Josephine's gardens and menageries in Paris, to gardens in Cairo, Rome and on Elba, to the walled garden of Hougoumont at the battle of Waterloo, and ultimately to Napoleon's final garden on St Helena, where Chinese labourers built him a summerhouse where he could sit and scan the sea in his final months.
During the French Revolution ideas about nature - human nature, the natural world and...