Published in 2013
384 pages
Kate Williams is an award-winning author. She studied for her BA at Oxford University and went on to earn an MA from the University of London and a DPhil in history from Oxford. A lecturer and TV consultant in addition to being CNN’s royal historian, she has hosted several documentaries on British television and appears regularly on both American and British networks. She is the author of three biographies–Ambition and Desire: The Dangerous Life of Josephine Bonaparte, England’s Mistress: The Infamous Life of Emma Hamilton, and Becoming Queen Victoria: The Unexpected Rise of Britain’s Greatest Monarch–as well as a novel, The Pleasures of Men. Her articles and essays have been published in a wide range of books and journals.
What is this book about?
This is the incredible rise and unbelievable fall of a woman whose energy and ambition is often overshadowed by Napoleon’s military might. In this triumphant biography, Kate Williams tells Josephine’s searing story, of sexual obsession, politics and surviving as a woman in a man’s world.
Abandoned in Paris by her aristocratic husband, Josephine’s future did not look promising. But while her friends and contemporaries were sent to the guillotine during the Terror that followed the Revolution, she survived prison and emerged as the doyenne of a wildly debauched party scene, surprising everybody when she encouraged the advances of a short, marginalised Corsican soldier, six years her junior.
Josephine, the fabulous hostess and skilled diplomat, was the perfect consort to the ambitious but obnoxious Napoleon. With her by his side, he became the greatest man in Europe, the Supreme Emperor; and she amassed a jewellery box with more diamonds than Marie Antoinette’s. But as his fame grew, Napoleon became increasingly obsessed with his need for an heir and irritated with Josephine’s extravagant spending. The woman who had enchanted France became desperate and jealous. Until, a divorcee aged forty-seven, she was forced to watch from the sidelines as Napoleon and his young bride produced a child.
