Customer Reviews

Napoleon Bonaparte: England's Prisoner: The Emperor in Exile 1816-21

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Mr. Giles gives us a great work, obviously carefully footnoted with very meticulous references, full of very interesting tidbits about British perceptions of Napoleon's stay on St. Helena. I left it, however, wishing for more than the historical details, wanting for more color about the participants, their own stories and experiences. The character of Sir Hudson Lowe does not come through clearly, despite the book's stated goal of demonstrating his relative innocence in the supposedly cruel treatment of Napoleon. There are many details, but Mr. Giles leaves it to us, based on the facts presented, to muster an image of the gaoler. Perhaps that is his intention---perhaps that is good historical documentation. That said, his description of the Lord and Lady Hollands feelings, again based on thorough first hand information, is excellent and insightful, perhaps especially due to their ample and descriptive writings. For Napoleon buffs, this one is--if not a nail-biter---a good essay on one aspect of his life.

I thought this was a pretty good account of Napoleon's last years when he was exiled to St. Helena. The book centered around the relationship between St. Helena's governor, Sir Hudson Lowe and Napoleon as they battled over protcols as if they were battlefields. In this book the author tries to paint out the much maligned governor, Sir Hudson Lowe in a more positive light. He secceeded only slightly to that goal. Sir Hudson Lowe, despite of Mr. Giles' best efforts, still ends up being a man of low imagination, petty minded and anal retentive individual who probably wasn't fit to supervised one of history's greatest figures. Its was Napoleon's misfortune that he was on an island governed by a jailer instead of a gentleman with a duty to perform.

The book proves to be interesting because it reflects on the relationship between Napoleon and his greatest of all his enemies, Great Britain. Its almost amazing that someone with Napoleon's intelligence can be so naive as to think that his greatest enemy will go easy on him the second time around.

The book also steered away from the conspiracy theory of Napoleon's murder as advanced in many of other books. Stomach cancer remains the cause of death in this book.

I found this book to be well written and researched. Its not as detail as I hoped and its don't give us a good inside look of Napoleon's household during this period. There were a lot of interesting personalities at St. Helena while Napoleon was alive.

Overall, this book proves to bit on the introductory level reading on Napoleon's exile to St. Helena and his life there. Easy to read and informative to a point, it should fill the void in any Napoleonic library until a more detail book comes out.

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this presentation. Giles' study of Napoleon's life from his decision to give himself up to the Royal Navy to the decsion-making and attitudes in England towards his disposition to his internment at St. Helena makes for engaging history. Utilizing many first-hand accounts the narrative is easy to listen to and a very good product.

This is quite a decent read on the treatment Napoleon received at the hands of his "...most consistent and generous foe, the British". A balanced account is what Mr Giles has stroved for and the coverage is generally admirable. Napoleon's jailer comes across as a more humane person than history has given him credit for.
I din't care much for the last part of the book which focussed on various poems written by great men of letters to explain the Napoleonic myth as I felt that such coverage was either too narrow or irrelevant to the overall British perception of Napoleon.