The emperor's last island - Julia Blackburn

The Emperor's Last Stand is a book about St Helena, an island with a sad, strange history, and about the tangle of stories and myths, absurdities and simple facts that have accumulated around Napoleon and his sojourn here. It follows him through the eyes of those who lived with him, who guarded him, who managed only to catch a brief glimpse of him, alive or dead.

It is also a personal account: a description of Julia Blackburn's own journey to St Helena and at the same time a journey through the private memories and associations evoked by the telling of this poignant and curious story.

Julia Blackburn has written ten books of non-fiction, the most recent of which, Time Song, was shortlisted for the 2019 Wainwright Golden Beer Book Prize. Her family memoir The Three of Us won the 2009 J.R. Ackerley Award, and her two novels, The Book of Colour and The Leper's Companions, were both shortlisted for the Orange Prize. She lives in Suffolk and Italy.

A melancholy and exquisitely bizarre essay on fame, morality and the vanity of human wishes
London Review of Books

Moving and original... Julia Blackburn writes like an angel
Mary Wesley

Pure enchantment, stranger than fiction
Cosmopolitan