Hello and welcome to The Spectator's Book Club podcast.

I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor of The Spectator.

And today, on the 200th anniversary of Napoleon's death,

I'm joined by Ruth Skir, the critic and writer,

whose new book is called Napoleon, A Life in Gardens and Shadows.

Ruth, welcome. I suppose you say in the introduction, a well-meaning friend said,

Napoleon? What more is there to say about him? What, you know, how did you overcome that to start with?

What led you to think, I should write a book about Napoleon?

So I think approaching anyone's biography, you come at it from who you are.

And that's the point of the Charlotte Bronte quote that I have right at the beginning of the book.

And she thinks about the death of Napoleon and says, you know, how should we approach this

subject with a great pomp of words or with simplicity?

And I think on that spectrum, I was much more towards the simplicity

angle and also accepting that there are many Napoleons. And it's not, nobody's life is something

that can just be conquered and told one way. So I approached this iconic, enormous

historical figure, wanting really to find an individual way of looking at that life.

And the way you chose was gardening. Now, I certainly not a Napoleon expert, but if you'd said, oh, Napoleon, you know, Keene

Gardner, I thought, what? You know, doesn't seem the obvious thing, does it? It's absolutely

not obvious. It's almost surreal. And I think I, in a sense, proud of that. But there was a very famous print of him on St Helena at the end of his

life, leaning on a spade and with a straw hat instead of the famous bicon hat. And for me,

I was always haunted by that image, by the idea of someone who had

risen from obscurity to such great heights, and then ended up right at the very end of his life,

...