An exotic recreation of the Paris of Napoleon III, 28 Feb 2001
I came across this book after reading a glowing review in the TLS. I often read history books but I had never heard of Peter Vansittart who according to the jacket is 80 years old and has written more than forty books! The god Hermes visits earth at various times to take a hand in helping historical events along. We meet him here as a dandy lounging in a Parisian cafe, a striking figure but somehow always barely noticed. Vansittart's beautiful prose can be very dense and initially a little daunting, but it has tremendous range and rhythm and the reader is soon quickly swept along in the tide of events conjured by Hermes that bring Napoleon and his second empire to the final destruction of the Franco-Prussian war. This is a virtuoso reading of the historical events, political motivations and follies of the last French empire and the court of Paris.

Vansittart deserves to be better known.