PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
An accomplished biographer attempts the Napoleonic summit. This long psychobiography is strongest on the sexuality of the Bonaparte family, but ranges also over schooling, revolution, law-making and, above all, war. Character sketches of the marshals of the Empire and plans of the great battles abound; the reader is made to feel the subject's towering greatness as well as his pettinesses. We learn, in conclusion, that he was poisoned on St Helena by a Bourbon double agent on his own staff. (Kirkus UK)
