Kirjahaku

'A truly remarkable writer, one of the most gifted non-fiction authors alive' Simon Schama, Financial TimesRobespierre was only thirty-six when he died, sent to the guillotine where he had sent thousands ahead of him.

'A truly remarkable writer, one of the most gifted non-fiction authors alive' Simon Schama, Financial TimesSHORTLISTED FOR THE 2015 COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARDThis is the autobiography that John Aubrey never wrote. You may not know his name.

"Judicious, balanced, and admirably clear at every point. This is quite the calmest and least abusive history of the Revolution you will ever read." --Hilary Mantel, London Review of Books Since his execution by guillotine in July 1794, Maximilien Robespierre has been contested terrain for historians. Was he a bloodthirsty charlatan or the only true defender of revolutionary ideals? The first modern dictator or the earliest democrat? Was his extreme moralism a heroic virtue or a ruinous flaw? Against the dramatic backdrop of the French Revolution, historian Ruth Scurr tracks Robespierre's evolution from provincial lawyer to devastatingly efficient revolutionary leader, righteous and paranoid in equal measure. She explores his reformist zeal, his role in the fall of the monarchy, his passionate attempts to design a modern republic, even his extraordinary effort to found a perfect religion. And she follows him into the Terror, as the former death- penalty opponent makes summary execution the order of the day, himself falling victim to the violence at the age of thirty-six. Written with epic sweep, full of nuance and insight, Fatal Purity is a fascinating portrait of a man who identified with the Revolution to the point of madness, and in so doing changed the course of history.

"How should one envisage this subject? With a great pomp of words, or with simplicity?" --Charlotte Bront , "The Death of Napoleon" The most celebrated general in history, Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) has for centuries attracted eminent male writers. Since Thomas Carlyle first christened him "our last Great Man," regiments of biographers have marched across the same territory, weighing campaigns and conflicts, military tactics and power politics. Yet in all this time, no definitive portrait of Napoleon has endured, and a mere handful of women have written his biography--a fact that surely would have pleased him.With Napoleon, Ruth Scurr, one of our most eloquent and original historians, emphatically rejects the shibboleth of the "Great Man" theory of history, instead following the dramatic trajectory of Napoleon's life through gardens, parks, and forests. As Scurr reveals, gardening was the first and last love of Napoleon, offering him a retreat from the manifold frustrations of war and politics. Gardens were, at the same time, a mirror image to the battlefields on which he fought, discrete settings in which terrain and weather were as important as they were in combat, but for creative rather than destructive purposes.Drawing on a wealth of contemporary and historical scholarship, and taking us from his early days at the military school in Brienne-le-Ch teau through his canny seizure of power and eventual exile, Napoleon frames the general's story through the green spaces he cultivated. Amid Corsican olive groves, ornate menageries in Paris, and lone garden plots on the island of Saint Helena, Scurr introduces a diverse cast of scientists, architects, family members, and gardeners, all of whom stood in the shadows of Napoleon's meteoric rise and fall. Building a cumulative panorama, she offers indelible portraits of Augustin Bon Joseph de Robespierre, the younger brother of Maximilien Robespierre, who used his position to advance Napoleon's career; Marianne Peusol, the fourteen-year-old girl manipulated into a Christmas-Eve assassination attempt on Napoleon that resulted in her death; and Emmanuel, comte de Las Cases, the atlas maker to whom Napoleon dictated his memoirs. As Scurr contends, Napoleon's dealings with these people offer unusual and unguarded opportunities to see how he grafted a new empire onto the remnants of the ancien r gime and the French Revolution.Epic in scale and novelistic in its detail, Napoleon, with stunning illustrations, is a work of revelatory range and depth, revealing the contours of the general's personality and power as no conventional biography can.

"How should one envisage this subject? With a great pomp of words, or with simplicity?" --Charlotte Bront , "The Death of Napoleon" The most celebrated general in history, Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) has for centuries attracted eminent male writers. Since Thomas Carlyle first christened him "our last Great Man," regiments of biographers have marched across the same territory, weighing campaigns and conflicts, military tactics and power politics. Yet in all this time, no definitive portrait of Napoleon has endured, and a mere handful of women have written his biography--a fact that surely would have pleased him.With Napoleon, Ruth Scurr, one of our most eloquent and original historians, emphatically rejects the shibboleth of the "Great Man" theory of history, instead following the dramatic trajectory of Napoleon's life through gardens, parks, and forests. As Scurr reveals, gardening was the first and last love of Napoleon, offering him a retreat from the manifold frustrations of war and politics. Gardens were, at the same time, a mirror image to the battlefields on which he fought, discrete settings in which terrain and weather were as important as they were in combat, but for creative rather than destructive purposes.Drawing on a wealth of contemporary and historical scholarship, and taking us from his early days at the military school in Brienne-le-Ch teau through his canny seizure of power and eventual exile, Napoleon frames the general's story through the green spaces he cultivated. Amid Corsican olive groves, ornate menageries in Paris, and lone garden plots on the island of Saint Helena, Scurr introduces a diverse cast of scientists, architects, family members, and gardeners, all of whom stood in the shadows of Napoleon's meteoric rise and fall. Building a cumulative panorama, she offers indelible portraits of Augustin Bon Joseph de Robespierre, the younger brother of Maximilien Robespierre, who used his position to advance Napoleon's career; Marianne Peusol, the fourteen-year-old girl manipulated into a Christmas-Eve assassination attempt on Napoleon that resulted in her death; and Emmanuel, comte de Las Cases, the atlas maker to whom Napoleon dictated his memoirs. As Scurr contends, Napoleon's dealings with these people offer unusual and unguarded opportunities to see how he grafted a new empire onto the remnants of the ancien r gime and the French Revolution.Epic in scale and novelistic in its detail, Napoleon, with stunning illustrations, is a work of revelatory range and depth, revealing the contours of the general's personality and power as no conventional biography can.

'Glorious... Scurr is one of the most gifted non-fiction writers alive' Simon Schama, Financial TimesA revelatory portrait of Napoleon written for our own time, exploring his love of nature and the gardens that gave his revolutionary life its light and shade.Napoleon's gardens range from his childhood olive groves in Corsica, to Josephine's menageries in Paris, to the walled garden of Hougoumont at the battle of Waterloo, and ultimately to St Helena, where he could sit and scan the sea in his final months.In this innovative biography, Ruth Scurr follows the dramatic trajectory of Napoleon's life through the land he cultivated and that offered him retreat from the manifold frustrations of war and politics. Seen through the eyes of those who knew him in the shade of his gardens, Napoleon emerges a giant figure made human - both as the Emperor hunting for glory and the man in an old straw hat, leaning on his spade.'Immensely satisfying and captivating... Charming and intelligent' Andrew Roberts, TLS'Grippingly original' The Times'A delight to read' Daily Telegraph * A Book of the Year in The Times, Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, Financial Times, Sunday Telegraph and History Today *Winner of a Society for Military History Distinguished Book Award 2022