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Barry O’Meara came from a well-connected Protestant family near present-day Blackrock, Co Dublin. A medical officer in the British Navy, by a strange set of circumstances, he found himself physician to Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte on the island of St Helena, a speck in the ocean off the coast of Africa, following Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo in 1815.
The author calls the conversations between them, somewhat extravagantly, among the liveliest “table-talk” in western history. The reader learns about Napoleon’s diet, his ailments, his attitudes towards, war, women, Waterloo, Wellington and many other things.
It is interesting to note that Napoleon is recorded by O’Meara as being dismissive of the United Irishmen exiled in France who were “continually quarrelling with one another”. This is accurate – Thomas Addis Emmet had challenged Arthur O’Connor to a duel when they were prisoners in Scotland before being allowed to settle in France. O’Connor became known as “Napoleon’s Irish general” and married the daughter of the philosopher and mathematician, Nicolas de Condorcet
Readers who are interested in Napoleon will be interested in this book.
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