NAPOLEON & ST HELENA: On the Island of Exile

Isolated in the vastness of the South Atlantic and fortress-like in appearance, the Island of St Helena was important for centuries only as a victualling station for ships of the British East India Company on their long voyages to and from India via the Cape of Good Hope. It was on one of those journeys that Arthur Wellesley, later the Duke of Wellington, took note of the island's remote impregnability. It was Wellington who suggested St Helena as Napoleon Bonaparte's place of imprisonment and exile after his defeat at Waterloo in 1815, thrusting the island to the centre of world affairs. Until his death in 1821, the former Emperor spent his final years under a constant British guard. His exile transformed a speck on the maritime map into the most famous island in the world. Today the island is a unique colonial survivor, almost without an economy of its own, lacking an airport, the only regular link is by the Royal Mail Ship. Napoleonic historian Johannes Willms visits this strange colonial survivor and unearths a past and present that both disturbs and delights with observations far beyond the ghost of Bonaparte. It is a vivid account of a visit to the last place on earth and how a remote people and place respond to their legacy and isolation in a global world. The Guardian said. 'Willms is a wry, entertaining commentator, properly suspicious of hagiography.' Longwood Old House was designed as just a temporary arrangement but Napoleon stubbornly refused to take any interest in his new abode, although contemporary watercolours and photographs of a later date make it clear that the house he was in must have been the finest property on St Helena apart from the Governor's Residence. 231pp in the compact Haus Publishing Armchair Travel series.