Word: napoleons
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Aymar, the only survivor of the seven children she had borne. With wit and unsentimental precision she recollected the exact details of a world that had vanished as if it never existed. What delights today's reader, though, is less the firsthand history (from the 1770s until Napoleon's return from Elba in 1815) than the self-portrait that slowly emerges. The Memoirs finally trace a cameo profile of aristocracy viewed from its better side and well deserving of the definition "grace under pressure...
Obediently, Madame returned to France with her husband in 1796, after the establishment of the Directorate. "I felt no pleasure at returning," she wrote, then complained no more. As Napoleon rose to Emperor, she settled down to a Frenchwoman's perennial business-being charming where it does the most good, come revolution or restoration...
Envoy of Charm. When her husband lost his post as prefect in Brussels, she composed her charms and went to Napoleon. He "placed his beautifully shaped hand on my arm" and she went home with the prefecture of Amiens. Sitting on a sofa next to King William I of The Netherlands, she assiduously promoted the diplomatic career of a son-in-law. She knew Great Men in her time, from the Duke of Wellington to Alexander Hamilton, and she leaves a delicate but firm impression that none of them-kings and emperors included -was quite safe in her company...
With Harris as Cromwell, George C. Scott as Patton, and Rod Steiger forthcoming as Napoleon, movie audiences will soon have that "choose a tyrant for 99c" option used to sell biographies of Louis XIV and Stalin in the book section of the New York Times. As biographies become flabby compendia, so historical movies-with the notable exception of Rossellini's The Rise of Louis XIV -go up in factual pretension while they go down in quality. Darryl Zanuck in Tora! Tora! Tora! spent millions to reproduce historical fact, but sacrificed artistic coherence for lavish commercial packaging. Hughes' Cromwell also fails...
...create battles that actually happened," said Edward Smith, secretary of the society's London section and a geological researcher by profession. "There's no fun in that. You already know how it comes out. We want to see if we can do better than Napoleon or Wellington." In the society's own Wars of the Roses, Henry VI has already been drowned en route to the Crusades and the old Duke of York (in reality beheaded in 1460) has been crowned Richard...