The Napoleon Bonaparte Podcast The Napoleon Bonaparte Podcast

The enthusiasm that David and Cameron have for Napoleon really shines through.

Being British myself I’ve come from a background where we view Napoleon as someone who wanted to dominate and invade us. Whilst I don’t doubt either intention this series did help me to rebalance my view.

Having said that, I do think there is sometimes a lack of critical thinking from Cameron and David. They are very pro-Napoleon and do sometimes come across as anti-British. It would have been good to hear more balance possibly by including sources from contemporaries in occupied societies to see what life was like for the Spanish, Flemish, Dutch etc. The presenters place a lot of weight on Napoleon being the Emperor of the French without presenting fully what life was like elsewhere.

Overall enjoyable and informative.

This has been an interesting podcast for me. David is very knowledgable on the subject. I do wish that Cameron would have chipped in a bit more, and maybe taken a devil’s advocate point of view, as David is very biased towards Napoleon, describing his retreat from Russia as a “tactical withdrawal”!

One thing that did confuse me a little was that on several occasions Napoleon was described as being one of the worlds greatest generals, alongside Alexander, Caesar, Genghis Khan etc. From what I gleaned from the podcast however, he seemed be a lower rank then that, although still great, making several mistakes resulting in his downfall.

I like the show overall. The quality of historical understanding is manifest a few times, such as when Markham claims that Trafalgar was irrelevant! And this is just a few shows after they talk about the Continental System. Also it’s evident that they (particularly Reilly) don’t like the British. That’s fine, but a historical debate shouldn’t be so clearly influenced by prejudice. Overall a good overview but the lack of detail on the battles themselves and the prejudice let it down.