'Glorious... Scurr is one of the most gifted non-fiction writers alive' Simon Schama, Financial Times

A revelatory portrait of Napoleon written for our own time, exploring his love of nature and the gardens that gave his revolutionary life its light and shade.

Napoleon's gardens range from his childhood olive groves in Corsica, to Josephine's menageries in Paris, to the walled garden of Hougoumont at the battle of Waterloo, and ultimately to St Helena, where he could sit and scan the sea in his final months.

In this innovative biography, Ruth Scurr follows the dramatic trajectory of Napoleon's life through the land he cultivated and that offered him retreat from the manifold frustrations of war and politics. Seen through the eyes of those who knew him in the shade of his gardens, Napoleon emerges a giant figure made human - both as the Emperor hunting for glory and the man in an old straw hat, leaning on his spade.

'Immensely satisfying and captivating... Charming and intelligent' Andrew Roberts, TLS

'Grippingly original' The Times

'A delight to read' Daily Telegraph

* A Book of the Year in The Times, Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, Financial Times, Sunday Telegraph and History Today *

Winner of a Society for Military History Distinguished Book Award 2022

Glorious . . . 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 -- Simon Schama * Financial Times *
Ruth Scurr, a politics don at Cambridge University, has ingeniously somehow found an entirely new prism through which to view Napoleon: as a horticulturist . . . an immensely satisfying and captivating book . . . charming and intelligent -- Andrew Roberts * Times Literary Supplement *
Ruth Scurr's imaginative take on Napoleon's life serves up fascinating insights into the man's behaviour and motivations, as well as an illuminating account of those around him. The gardening angle is fresh and perfectly developed; to garden is to control and manipulate, an empire builder does the same -- Penelope Lively
An elegant prose stylist, Scurr is above all a fabulous historian, and a vivid storyteller with a novelist's eye for engaging detail . . . 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 -- Claire Messud * Harper’s Magazine *
Napoleon: A Life in Gardens and Shadows is history at its most enjoyable, a discursive ramble along its edges, away from matters of power and into its byways . . . Napoleon is a delight to read and must have been an immense pleasure to research -- Caroline Moorehead * Literary Review *
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. A brilliantly original biographer . . . She can write beautifully; and she casts a cold eye on proceedings, unfazed by previous adoration or condemnation of her subject . . . grippingly original -- Paul Lay * The Times *
Scurr . . . is a mine of information on the Jardin des Plantes, with its hot-houses, museum of natural history and menagerie... [and] introduces an array of naturalists and scientists who provide avenues of arresting detail on usually neglected aspects of the great flourishing that was Napoleonic France . . . a delight to read -- Adam Zamoyski * Daily Telegraph *

Beautiful . . . It is an adjustment to think of Napoleon as a cultivator rather than as a conqueror, a planter rather than a planner. But such ambivalences are precisely Ms. Scurr's métier . . . 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: not as a megalomaniac's power-hungry ascent to temporary glory but as the constantly frustrated reaching for the plenitude and happiness that Joséphine's found in her garden

Ruth Scurr is an historian, biographer and literary critic. She teaches history and politics at Cambridge University, where she is a Lecturer and Fellow of Gonville & Caius College. Her first book, Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution won the Franco-British Society Literary Prize, was longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize and was listed among the 100 Best Books of the Decade in The Times. She reviews regularly for the Times Literary Supplement, The Telegraph and the Wall Street Journal.