![]() ![]() It's hard to imagine Wellington - whose private interests never strayed much beyond women and fox-hunting - having a serious discussion about theatre with Goethe, as Napoleon once did. That was the only time the two commanders were present at the same engagement, though they were never far from each other's thoughts the upstart Corsican and the Anglo-Irish toff, utterly unlike each other except in their ability to inspire and lead men. Waterloo alone occupies nearly a quarter of his text. ![]() This may not sound like the makings of an action-packed thriller, but potential tedium is relieved when the two nations face each other on the battlefield and the author goes into descriptive mode. Roberts has now added to the list by recruiting Wellington and writing a book about both of them, analysing above all "what each man thought, wrote and said about the other". I should think not, when his next 13 lines review the separate Napoleonic topics that have been given sometimes multiple treatment, including at least one volume on a single bequest in his will. ![]() "To find a new angle on Napoleon has not been easy," writes Andrew Roberts. ![]()
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