Betsy
AND THE
Emperor

ANNE WHITEHEAD is an author, historian and former TV producer-director with the ABC. She is the author of Bluestocking in Patagonia and her book Paradise Mislaid was winner of the NSW Premier’s Award for Australian History.

‘A fascinating exploration of the life journey of Betsy Balcombe Abell from St Helena to Sydney to London. This is a well-researched and readable history of the dramatic repercussions for an English family of its proximity to Napoleon in his final years on St Helena.’

—Professor Ann Curthoys, University of Sydney

‘St Helena: an exiled emperor in the garden pavilion and in the house a pretty, flighty teenager. And therefrom spring some fascinating narratives, ending up, after a disastrous marriage to a stylish cad, in colonial New South Wales.’

—Marion Halligan, award-winning author