LETTER OF THE MONTH
Interesting as your feature on Napoleon’s “many faces” was (Christmas), it surprisingly omits his fascination with ancient Egypt. In 1798, a large party of French savants, including scientists such as Joseph Fourier, accompanied Napoleon’s military expedition to Egypt. Back in France, they launched Egyptology and published the nine elephantine volumes of the Description de l’Egypte between 1809 and 1828, initially by order of Napoleon as emperor.
As for Ridley Scott’s film Napoleon, it shows his army in Egypt firing cannons at the Pyramids of Giza – a grotesque distortion of history. In fact, when the French army first encountered the great temple of Luxor with its highly inscribed obelisks of Ramesses II, it was so struck by the unfamiliar spectacle that, according to a witness, “it halted of itself and, by one spontaneous impulse, grounded its arms”.
Andrew Robinson, London
Princes and politics
Can you please explain why a history magazine has given four pages to Philippa Langley’s new book (Books Interview, January) when she is just an amateur historian? And why did you not give space, in the same issue, to a real historian of the period to counter the inaccuracies and misinterpreting of long-known facts and documents in regard to the princes and the imposters? Perkin Warbeck, whom Langley says was Prince Richard, recanted his imposture again at his execution, which in such religious times he certainly would not have done if he was truly Richard.
I do not know if Richard III killed his nephews, and after all this time no one ever will. But he was a man of his era, and that era was brutal. Killings took place, but you are not going to find that blatantly stated in the records. As for these boys being called ‘king’ by their followers – they would be, they were trying to take a throne! Margaret [of Burgundy, sister of Edward IV] described the imposters as her nephews, so of course [Holy Roman Emperor] Maximillian would do the same. It’s called politics. They were all out to see how a change of government would benefit them personally.
Langley’s ‘evidence’ is nothing of the sort. It should be left to the tabloids, not a magazine that used to pride itself on its accuracy and objectivity.
C Alexander, Cornwall
Shakespearean stereotype?
I read the feature on Shakespeare in the January is
