After Waterloo, Napoleon gave himself up to the English on the understanding that they would lodge him in a fairly large country house just outside London. Instead, he spent the final six years of his life as a prisoner of St Helena, a tiny tropical island in the South Atlantic. More than 2000 British soldiers were stationed there to ensure he could not escape, and the former Emperor and his companions lived in a wind-blown tumbledown house. This is a book about St Helena, an island with a sad, strange history. It follows Napoleon through the eyes of those who lived with him and guarded him, and is also a description of the author's own journey to the island.