Scurr has ingeniously somehow found an entirely new prism through which to view Napoleon ... Dr Scurr takes the opportunity to discourse on numerous aspects of Napoleon and the natural world, and has ultimately produced a somewhat eccentric but immensely satisfying and captivating book ... 'There is always something new to say,' Scurr says of Napoleon, 'no matter how many regiments of biographers have marched across the same ground.' With this charming and intelligent book about a hitherto entirely unexamined aspect of the Bonapartist epic, she persuades us of this comforting truth.
An elegant prose stylist, Scurr is above all a fabulous historian, and a vivid storyteller with a novelist’s eye for engaging detail. With the exception of the Battle of Waterloo—the most significant fighting of which took place over a garden at Hougoumont—the wars in this book occur largely offstage. Napoleon emerges not in his warrior guise but in his full humanity ... History’s palimpsest emerges in these pages too, through Scurr’s accounts of modern-day places shaped by Napoleon’s vision: while his empire is the stuff of history books, his legacy as a landscape genius endures.
... beautiful ... a book so saturated with detail that the reader can hear the gravel crunching under her characters’ feet ... The mountain of biographies written about the 'Little Corporal' must, at this point, be higher than the Alps he famously crossed in 1800, but her horticultural angle allows Ms. Scurr to tell the endlessly fascinating story of his life anew ... the author successfully complicates our image of the man Tolstoy dubbed an 'executioner of peoples'.
... improbably glorious and exceptionally herbaceous ... Scurr has achieved something remarkable: a completely original book on a completely unoriginal subject. But then she is herself a truly remarkable writer, one of the most gifted non-fiction authors alive ... Notwithstanding the fact that the author is evidently herself a keen gardener who clearly knows her pelargonium from her amaryllis, the project of seeing Napoleon fresh through his relationship with the natural world would seem, to say the least, a bit of a stretch. But then Scurr understands just how central botanising was to the Enlightenment mind, even, or especially, to those who also felt the blood rush of arms, and Napoleon: A Life in Gardens and Shadows reveals a Bonaparte no one else has managed to illuminate in quite the same way ... This is probably not the book to go to if what you want is a procession of military collisions, though Scurr’s account of the murderous fight, 'tree by tree', for the walled garden at Hougoumont — the decisive battle within the battle of Waterloo — will actually drop you in the midst of the carnage more intensely than any military history ... this is one of the best books you’ll ever read on what without too much oxymoronic licence can be called Napoleonic culture ... Most appealingly, we get the women, for once not treated decoratively or empire-line erotic but fully present in their own right ... marvellous.
The Cambridge historian Ruth Scurr brings shades of subtlety and nuance to a life well known, telling Napoleon’s story through his love of nature and the gardens ... Scurr has attributes too often missing among her contemporaries. She can write, beautifully; and she casts a cold eye on proceedings, unfazed by previous adoration or condemnation of her subject ... His life, outlined in this grippingly original study, had come full circle to the lonely child, far from home. In his beginning was his end.
Looking at Bonaparte through the lens of his passion for gardens brings out new and fascinating details about his life, including his love of science and engineering, his obsession with botany and especially his desire to stamp order upon an unruly natural and political world. Gardens, as this book makes clear, are the ultimate symbol of Bonaparte’s life—especially at its end, when every attempt to bring life and beauty to his final exile ended in dust and futility ... What makes Napoleon so satisfying is that it illuminates not only the emperor but also people from his life who in other accounts are, at best, mere witnesses to the man’s ambitions and exploits ... a rewarding book that gives intriguing and novel insight into a man about whom we thought everything had already been said.
There is little in this book that suggests that Napoleon’s ideas about gardens or his tastes were original or interesting, and yet the man we see through these gardens — the lover of straight lines and grandiose schemes — is only too recognisably the same centralising, controlling micro-manager who set out to impose his will on Europe and his civil code on France ... Scurr’s is an approach that pays some real dividends — rich details, fresh perspectives, a different cast of characters — but if her Napoleon the Gardener is essentially one with the Napoleon we all think we know he is a curiously diminished version. There is no question that he brought to his gardening projects the same energy and inquiring mind he brought to everything he did, and yet there is so vast a gulf between tidying gardens and sweeping away the 1,000-years’ rubble of the Holy Roman Empire, between grafting trees and grafting the Bonaparte name on to the royal houses of Europe, that anyone coming fresh to Napoleon’s life (if there is such a reader) might easily end up wondering what all the fuss was about ... There is, admittedly, a regular, if slightly cursory nod in the direction of the bigger picture — a couple of pages on the Russian campaign, for instance — and perhaps in the end the enduring image of Napoleon that Scurr leaves us with is at least as true as the Napoleon of his own myth-making ... Not the whole story, of course, and not the Napoleon whose body would be exhumed and now lies in Les Invalides: but one, nevertheless, that needs remembering.
Scurr elegantly explores Napoleon’s inner Rousseau, the 18th-century philosopher who extolled nature and the simple life. Among the vast acreage of Napoleonic studies, it’s good to have at least one book that emphasizes flower beds instead of battlefields.
Scurr here uses her signal strength as biographer to look at what seems a small matter, and through it illuminate a much larger subject ... lively ... While the book does not include images, Scurr’s vivid writing helps to convey a visual portrait; the book’s extensive bibliography may spark interest for further reading ... Though this isn’t the first book one should about Napoleon, it is an attractive one, which presents an unusual perspective on the life of the general.
A study of Napoleon Bonaparte’s life with an emphasis on horticulture that, believe it or not, works ... Readers will learn a lot about the design and layout of the gardens as well as the controversy and expense involved. A diligent historian, Scurr does not ignore the wars and politics that dominated Napoleon’s life, and she concludes with a vivid account of the battle of Waterloo, in which the chateau of Hougoumont, with its 'high garden walls,' played a central role. Those seeking more details will want a traditional work. Andrew Roberts’ 2014 biography should be the first choice, but this is a welcome addition to the literature ... A wealth of natural history and a fine Napoleon biography.
... unusual and perceptive ... Even readers well-versed in Napoleon’s rise and fall will learn something new from this gracefully written and imaginatively conceived portrait.