Ruth Scurr
When Betsy Met Bonaparte
Napoleon's Last Island
By Thomas Keneally
Sceptre 426pp £18.99
Thomas Keneally, author of over thirty novels, among them the Booker Prize winner Schindler’s Ark (1982), decided to write about Napoleon after visiting an exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2012. Some of the exhibits were from the collection of the Balcombe family, who befriended Napoleon during his last exile on the South Atlantic island of St Helena. They included Sèvres plate, Jacob Frères furniture, a lock of Napoleon’s hair and his death mask. ‘We people of the globe’s southernmost regions are used to going to Europe on interminable, brain-numbing flights to gawp at such items,’ writes Keneally, ‘but to be able to do it in Australia was a delight.’
The Balcombe family eventually emigrated from England, via St Helena, to Australia; when Napoleon was exiled there in 1815 William Balcombe was superintendent of public sales for the East India Company. Napoleon lived in a pavilion at the bottom of the Balcombes’ garden when he first arrived on the island while he waited for his permanent residence to be finished. He became fond of the whole family, especially William’s second daughter, Betsy, a feisty girl of thirteen who later wrote Recollections of the Emperor Napoleon on the Island of St Helena (1844).
Keneally, who is now eighty, boldly chose to write as Betsy, assuming the voice of a 19th-century teenager. He presents his novel as a secret journal, ‘the one hidden behind the real one published in 1844’. His purpose is far from hagiographical. ‘I am an Australian bush republican’, he writes
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Paul Gauguin kept house with a teenage ‘wife’ in French Polynesia, islands whose culture he is often accused of ransacking for his art.
@StephenSmithWDS asks if Gauguin is still worth looking at.
Stephen Smith - Art of Rebellion
Stephen Smith: Art of Rebellion - Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux
literaryreview.co.uk
‘I have fond memories of discussing Lorca and the state of Andalusian theatre with Antonio Banderas as Lauren Bacall sat on the dressing-room couch.’
@henryhitchings on Simon Russell Beale.
Henry Hitchings - The Play’s the Thing
Henry Hitchings: The Play’s the Thing - A Piece of Work: Playing Shakespeare & Other Stories by Simon Russell Beale
literaryreview.co.uk
We are saddened to hear of the death of Fredric Jameson.
Here, from 1983, is Terry Eagleton’s review of The Political Unconscious.
Terry Eagleton - Supermarket of the Mind
Terry Eagleton: Supermarket of the Mind - The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act by Fredric Jameson
literaryreview.co.uk