A Strange Tale: Thomas Keneally on the last days of Napoleon
November 4, 2016 - The Chairman in Book Reviews
This is an u
nusual book. It’s a novel about Napoleon’s exile in St Helena and tells the story of the Ogre’s arrival and stay on the island from the eyes of a young girl who allegedly got to know him well. It’s a charming tale and is really in two parts “Before Lowe” and ” In Lowe’s time”.
Before Napoleon was able to enjoy a relatively benign regime but as soon as Sir Hudson Lowe arrived he made his captive’s life pretty good hell by nitpicking on the smallest detail. His petty restrictions made ODF’s (Our Dear Friend) life unbearable and were in the main entirely unnecessary and went unknown to sensible men in the Cabinet in London.
Worth a read but perhaps should be read in conjunction with “Terrible Exile” by Brian Unwin. My main complaint about Thomas Keneally’s entertaining book is the lack of a map of the island. This could be corrected by readers by downloading our new item – a map of the island. See http://ageofrevolution.org/200-object/map-st-helena-made-captain-john-barnes-1811/
