Two short reviews: The Song of Simon de Montfort and Being Napoleon

I haven't done a huge amount of book finishing recently, but the most recent non-fiction book I've got all the way through was this one, The Song of Simon de Montfort, by Sophie Therese Ambler. It is a biography focused on two main points: how de Montfort conceived of his role in opposing and controlling the king, and how he appeared through the eyes of those that followed him.

The book begins with the end: Simon preparing to die on the field at Evesham, and everything that follows then leads us back to this moment. It's a neat trick to engage the reader, and it works. 

On the whole I found the book informative - to my shame I didn't know a great deal about de Montfort before reading this - but it is also something of a hagiography, as inevitably it must be given its stated aims. Simon is shown as a great revolutionary driven by his cause, standing up for the common people, wronged by his king, and in the end by his confederates. That his own arrogance, selective morality, manipulative tactics and dubious methods of obtaining funds contributed to his demise is largely overlooked. 

The book is engagingly written, nicely weighted and well paced, but if a man's qualities are to be as lauded as much they are here, for his faults to be glossed over so consistently eventually generates a kind of low level rumble of resentment in the reader. When the book was done, it was that sense of discontent that stayed with me.

I'd give it 3.5 out of 5. It's a good read-on-the-plane kind of book, and has motivated me to look more into gaming the period, as well.

The second short review I have is for a 2018 documentary on Netflix called Being Napoleon. The Netflix blurb is for a quirky, offbeat piece, and I can't really improve on that as a description. It follows the fortunes of various oddball characters as they build up to a reenactment on the 200th anniversary of Waterloo. There is the occasional lurch towards mockumentary, but it always manages to remain on the right side of that line.

It ended up an affecting watch, with the emotional heart of the film turning out to be not quite where you would have expected it to be.

4.5 out of 5 for me. If you have Netflix and haven't seen it already, I would suggest giving it a look.