The young Napoleon

My son-in-law, Aonghus, once kindly said something to me that particularly pleased me.
He said “ Martin, the thing about you is that you have interests”

Of course my family would have corrected him and told him that what I am is obsessive, I get an interest in something and don’t rest until I have gotten all the information I want about it.
There have been times when this compulsion has paid off in spades.
My teenage obsession on Napoleon Bonaparte is a case in point.
It all started with my banning from reading all books for a year (see previous words)
As soon as I started to read again I started to read with a savage avidity.
I started with all the books I could find in the house.
Neither of my parents were wide readers but both, in those pre- television days would always have a novel on the go.
The house was full of Nevil Shutes, Ian Flemings,and for my mother Georgette Heyers and , her personal favourites, the romantic Irish novels of Maurice Walsh.
I read my way through all these and many more.
I even read my way through the books my father kept underneath his clean shirts in his large mahogany chest of drawers.
I enjoyed then all equally, even the Heyers, these giving me a taste for historical novels which I still have.
I struck pay dirt though when I started to read a book by Annamarie Selinko, called Desireé.

Queen Desireé of Sweden

This was a novelisation of the truly fascinating Desireé Clary, a daughter of an old Irish family of silk merchants in Marseille.
She was one time flame of Napoleon, her sister Julie married his brother Joseph, she was to marry one of his generals; Bernadotte who, in turn was offered, and accepted the Swedish throne and so she became the mother of the modern royal family of Sweden.
Not bad for a descendant of the Clearys from Wexford!
Is it any wonder (I can feel my curiosity rising once more) that I decided I wanted to find out as much as I could about her, and not just her (there was very little information about Desireé that I could find) but about her old flame, his family and the entire shanigans of the Bonaparte family.
There was loads available about them.
I found a sympathetic librarian in Cork Library who was only delighted to order books about Napoleon for me. I got the titles from the simple expedient of looking up the books referenced in the books I was reading and ordering in the ones I thought I would find interesting.
This way I became quite knowledgeable about him and all his family, his rise, his reign as Emperor and his decline, defeat and exiles.

After about a year the interest died down but remained in there on the back boiler in my mind.
It was to resurface when I was sitting my finals for my BA in history in UCD about seven years later.
I was not an ideal student, in fact my student career would best be glossed over.
However in preparation for my History finals I decided to have I go through past papers and discovered that if I was lucky and careful I could answer all the European section on Napoleon and his wars.
I was lucky.
The right stuff came up and I got my degree in history based on the work I had put in in the library in Cork when I was 14.
Sometimes it’s great to have interests!