Although I find him more interesting than most despots, I was not an admirer of Napoleon Bonaparte long before I read J. Christopher Herold’s excellent, BONAPARTE IN EGYPT; and I have never understood how the French could so idolize him after he abandoned his small army in Egypt and his huge one in Russia, killing millions, while always managing to save his own plump derriere.

        The image of Napoleon that comes down to us through history is of the stocky, square-headed man of Austerlitz and Waterloo, but he was not that before or after.  At St. Helena I saw the wasted skull of his death mask; and when he was in Egypt at age thirty, Herold describes him as, “a lean, sallow little man whose hat and boots seemed too large for him.”

        There are two pleasures in BONAPARTE IN EGYPT.  The first is the story itself:  The French army landing near Alexandria, marching to Cairo and without pause fighting what became known as The Battle of the Pyramids, while Nelson almost simultaneously destroyed the French fleet in The Battle of the Nile, isolating and trapping the French.  Months of chasing Mamelukes south along the Nile and into the desert, during which many of the splendors of ancient Egypt were seen by modern Europeans for the first time.  An invasion of what is present day Israel and Syria, complete with irrefutable war crimes and the bubonic plague.   And the complex, though generally reprehensible, character of Napoleon himself.

        The other pleasure is the style, wit and intelligence of J. Christopher, which is akin to the pleasure of Gibbon in THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

        In writing of Lord Nelson, he says, “He also affected . . . to entertain a peculiarly intimate relationship with the Almighty, whom he gratefully credited, along with his subordinates, for his successes.  In this respect his modesty exceeded Bonaparte’s, who claimed all the credit for himself.”

        And writing of Nelson’s apotheosis after The Battle of the Nile, “King Ferdinand--a man with the countenance (and mentality) of a prosperous village idiot called him ‘his deliverer and preserver.’  . . . Yet Admiral Nelson redeems his vanity with a phrase that expresses the noble and romantic side of glory hunting in three simple words.  If King George should give him a peerage, he wrote to his wife, she ought to go to Court, without minding the expense.  ‘Money is trash.’ “

        And of Napoleon, “He appreciated the usefulness of the useless:  thus, for instance, it is difficult to conceive of any practical application that could be made of Egyptology; but it was with his expedition that that science originated.  . . .  There is nothing he ever wasted, except human lives.”

        I could easily add more, but that is enough.

        In searching the Internet I have found that J. Christopher Herold died in 1964 at age 45.  Before he did he wrote several other books, and I have already ordered three from Amazon.

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        Those of you who have read THE OCEAN WAITS may recall that the chapter covering the passage between Bali and Singapore in CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE is titled, ‘Dire Straits’ because I passed through five or six different straits in that thousand miles, none of which were particularly dire.  I had not heard at the time of the rock group of that name.  Though their first album came out in 1978, it was 1985’s BROTHERS IN ARMS that made them world famous.

        In 1988, when Jill and I were living on RESURGAM on a mooring in Sydney, Dire Straits ended their world tour in Australia and broke up, albeit only briefly, for the first time.

        I recall that they had a mutual love affair with Australia and gave more than a dozen final concerts, some for charity, and one that I saw televised, before they actually did bring the tour to an end.

        Although I’m of an age to have seen the beginning of rock and roll and can even remember hearing Bill Haley and the Comets play “Rock Around the Clock,” I’ve never been a fan of rock and roll, which perhaps makes it surprising that if I had to pick a favorite male singer it would probably be Mark Knopfler, Dire Strait’s lead singer and guitarist.

        In addition to the work he did with the group, he has made several albums as a soloist, and written lovely and lyrical movie scores for, among others, LOCAL HERO; LAST EXIT FROM BROOKLYN; and THE PRINCESS BRIDE.

        I like the sounds and I like the words and I like that he writes about subjects that no one else ever considered writing about:  Sonny Liston; the drawing of the Mason-Dixon Line; Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonalds; Imelda Marcos, wife of the Philippine dictator; and--and this the link to Napoleon--“Done With Bonaparte,” about the Grand Army’s retreat from Moscow. 

        One of his songs is “Single Handed Sailor.”  And another, “Brothers In Arms” is as haunting as any ever written.

        I don’t think most of this is rock and roll.  If it is, then Mark Knopfler has raised it to fine art.