Napoleon: A Life
Andrew Roberts, 2014
Viking Adult
976 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780670025329
Summary
The definitive biography of the great soldier-statesman...
Austerlitz, Borodino, Waterloo: his battles are among the greatest in history, but Napoleon Bonaparte was far more than a military genius and astute leader of men. Like George Washington and his own hero Julius Caesar, he was one of the greatest soldier-statesmen of all times.
Andrew Roberts’s Napoleon is the first one-volume biography to take advantage of the recent publication of Napoleon’s thirty-three thousand letters, which radically transform our understanding of his character and motivation. At last we see him as he was: protean multitasker, decisive, surprisingly willing to forgive his enemies and his errant wife Josephine. Like Churchill, he understood the strategic importance of telling his own story, and his memoirs, dictated from exile on St. Helena, became the single bestselling book of the nineteenth century.
An award-winning historian, Roberts traveled to fifty-three of Napoleon’s sixty battle sites, discovered crucial new documents in archives, and even made the long trip by boat to St. Helena. He is as acute in his understanding of politics as he is of military history. Here at last is a biography worthy of its subject: magisterial, insightful, beautifully written, by one of our foremost historians. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—January 13, 1963
• Where—London, England, UK
• Education—B. A., Ph.D., Cambridge University
• Awards—Wolfson History Prize; James Stern Silver Pen Award
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York, USA
Andrew Roberts is a British historian and journalist, who was born in London, England, the son of Simon (a business executive) from Cobham, Surrey, and Katie Roberts. Simon Roberts inherited Job's Dairy milk business and owned the United Kingdom contingent of Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants.
He attended Cranleigh School until he was expelled for a variety of misdemeanours. He later attained a first class honours BA degree in Modern History at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, in 1985, where he is an honorary senior scholar and PhD. Dr Roberts began his post-graduate career in corporate finance as an investment banker and private company director with the London merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., where he worked from 1985 to 1988.
He is divorced from his first wife with whom he had two children, Henry and Cassia, who live in Edinburgh. Roberts is married to Susan Gilchrist, CEO of the corporate communications firm Brunswick Group LLP and a Governor of the South Bank Centre. They live in New York City.
Support for the Iraq War
During the buildup to the Iraq War Roberts supported the proposed invasion, arguing that anything less would be tantamount to appeasement. For English speaking people, the Iraq War was "an existential war for the survival of their way of life" against Islamofascism. He strongly supported Tony Blair's foreign policy, comparing him to Winston Churchill: he wrote (in 2003) that apotheosis for Churchill came in 1940; for Tony Blair, it would come when Iraq was successfully invaded and hundreds of weapons of mass destruction were unearthed.
When no weapons of mass destruction were ever found, however, he made no comment . Nor did he comment on the hundreds of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis killed since the invasion, although he did note that Britain had "lost fewer soldiers than on a normal weekend on the Western Front." Both the "overthrow of the Taliban in 2001 and the victory over Saddam Hussein two years later were won at an incredibly low cost in historical terms."
Books
Robert's first book The Holy Fox (1991) is a biography of Edward Wood, both Neville Chamberlain's and Winston Churchill's foreign secretary. Halifax has been charged with appeasement, along with Chamberlain, but Roberts asserts that Halifax in fact began to move his government away from that policy following the 1938 Munich Crisis.
His second book Eminent Churchillians (1994) is a collection of essays about friends and enemies of Churchill and includes an attack on Admiral of the Fleet Louis Mountbatten.
Salisbury: Victorian Titan (1999), is the authorised biography of the Victorian prime minister Robert Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, which won the Wolfson History Prize and the James Stern Silver Pen Award for Non-Fiction.
In Napoleon and Wellington (2001), Roberts investigates the relationship between the two generals. It became the subject of the lead review in all but one of Britain's national newspapers.
Hitler and Churchill: Secrets of Leadership (2003), coincided with Roberts's four-part BBC 2 history series. In the book, which addresses the leadership techniques of Hitler and Churchill, he delivered a rebuttal to many of the assertions made by Clive Ponting and Christopher Hitchens concerning Churchill.
His Waterloo: Napoleon's Last Gamble (2005) was published in America as Waterloo: The Battle for Modern Europe.
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900 (2006) is a sequel to his four volumes on Churchill and won the Intercollegiate Studies Institute Book Award.
Masters and Commanders (2008) describes how four figures shaped the strategy of the West during the Second World War.
Roberts served as general editor with a team of historians for The Art of War (2008, 2009), a two-volume chronological survey of the greatest military commanders in history.
The Storm of War (2009), Roberts best-selling title to date, reached number two in the (London) Sunday Times bestseller list. The book was awarded British Army Military Book of the Year 2010.
Napoleon: A Life (2014) has been referred to as the definitive biography of Bonaparte. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/13/2014.)
Book Reviews
Is another long life of Napoleon really necessary? On three counts, the answer given by Andrew Roberts’s impressive book is an emphatic yes. The most important is that this is the first single-volume general biography to make full use of the treasure trove of Napoleon’s 33,000-odd letters, which began being published in Paris only in 2004. Second, Roberts, who has previously written on Napoleon and Wellington, is a masterly analyst of the French emperor’s many battles. Third, his book is beautifully written and a pleasure to read.
Economist
[E]xamines Napoleon Bonaparte’s life and times in excruciating detail, leaving out little.... Roberts writes, describing his coronation as Emperor of France as “a defining moment” of the Enlightenment.... This is a definitive account that dispels many of the myths that surrounded Napoleon from his lifetime to the present day.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) The author doesn't apologize for Napoleon's errors but the tone of his study is positive: Napoleon "personified the best parts of the French Revolution." ... Verdict: This voluminous work is likely to set the standard for subsequent accounts of Napoleon's life. It should appeal widely to readers of all types. —David Keymer, Modesto, CA
Library Journal
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