The life of Napoleon
About this audiobook
The Life of Napoleon by John Holland Rose has stood the test of time and and stands as testimony to his bold claim at the end of the preface that “I can honestly say, in the words of the late Bishop of London, that “I have tried to write true history.”” And we are willing still to read his work because, as he wrote:
“While not neglecting the personal details of the great man's life, I have dwelt mainly on his public career. Apart from his brilliant conversations, his private life has few features of abiding interest, perhaps because he early tired of the shallowness of Josephine and the Corsican angularity of his brothers and sisters. But the cause also lay in his own disposition. He once said to M. Gallois: “Je n'aime pas beaucoup les femmes, ni le jeu -enfin rien: – je suis tout à fait un être politique.” In dealing with him as a warrior and statesman, and in sparing my readers details as to his bolting his food, sleeping at concerts, and indulging in amours where for him there was no glamour of romance, I am laying stress on what interested him most -in a word, I am taking him at his best.”
About the author
Born in Bedford, England, and after studying at Bedford Modern School, Holland Rose (1855 – 1942) was later educated at Owens College in Manchester in the 1870s. He was then elected a scholar at Christ's College, Cambridge (later to become a fellow), passed his M.A. and become a university extension lecturer there in history. Rose had a literary career as well as one of a historian, being the general editor of a series on Victorian life published in the late 1890s. Rose not only wrote on Napoleonic history but also on classical antiquity and contemporary matters, writing notably on the First World War. From 1919-1934 he was the first prestigious Vere-Harmsworth Professor of Naval History, at the University of Cambridge. He was a leading authority on British history of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic period. He bequeathed a sum to Christ's College for the endowment of a scholarship to encourage the study of British imperial history.
