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.