To the Editors:

Conrad Black I rate as a good friend, but I am shocked by a grave misrepresentation of my views on Napoleon in his critique of Andrew Roberts’s Napoleon: The Great (“The great soldier–statesman,” November 2014). He lumps me in with other “familiar historians” guilty of equating Napoleon with Adolf Hitler.

This is the exact reverse of my views. If I may quote from my most recent book on the subject, The Age of Napoleon (Weidenfeld 2004, p. 2):

Parallels have frequently been drawn between Hitler and Napoleon, the two great warlords. But they are spurious. In terms of civil, non-military accomplishments, Hitler after twelve years in power bequeathed to Germany nothing but a mountain of skulls and rubble. Napoleon, on the other hand, had he never fought a single battle, would still have to be rated one of history’s great leaders for the system of administration and the civil reforms he left behind him in France.

I know Conrad has read the passage (he has read every book on Napoleon!), and, with his legendary memory for the written page, it is all the more puzzling that he should commit such an inaccurate, and, indeed, rather damaging assertion.

Sir Alistair Horne

Oxfordshire, UK

Conrad Black replies:

I warmly reciprocate Sir Alistair Horne’s goodwill. I have read his excellent books on Napoleon and other periods in French history, and I have thought that he held Napoleon almost entirely responsible