The judges of the 2022 Franco-British Society Literary Award chose as the prize winner Napoleon at peace: how to end a revolution, by William Doyle. (Reaktion Books. 231 pp. £15.99. ISBN 9781789146172).
 

A history of how Napoleon ended the Revolutionary period in France, covering the period in 1802-1803 when he ended the republican polity the Revolution had brought and established himself as a monarch in all but name, brought the Revolutionary wars with the great powers of Europe to a peace advantageous to France, and reconciled France with the papacy.

​The attempts to recover France’s lost Caribbean empire, however, were a failure, and the fragile peace with the other great powers (including Great Britain) and the papacy soon broke down; the Revolutionary Wars became the Napoleonic Wars.
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This book covers specifically the only period of Napoleon’s career when he was not at war, a period usually just covered as an interlude in more general studies of his life.


​William Doyle was awarded Literary Prize winner 2022 by Arts Minister Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, on 13th July at the House of Lords

Information about the event is available HERE. 

Wiliam Doyle was born in Yorkshire (1942) and studied Modern History at Oriel College, Oxford. He went on to take a doctorate for a thesis on eighteenth century Bordeaux. He taught for fourteen years at the University of York before becoming Professor of Modern History at the University of Nottingham  in 1981. Five years later he moved to a chair at the University of Bristol, where he remained until retirement in 2008. He has also held a number of visiting appointments in France and the USA. Before Napoleon at Peace he had written seventeen books, mostly on French history, the best known being The Oxford History of the French Revolution (1989, 3rd edn.2018). Elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1998, he is also a corresponding member of the Academies of Bordeaux and Besancon, was one of the founders of the Society for the Study of French History, and is a Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes academiques. He lives in Bath.
The judges of the 2021 Franco-British Society Literary Award chose as one of the two prize winners To kidnap a Pope: Napoleon and Pius VII, by Ambrogio A. Caiani

In the wake of the French Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of France, and Pope Pius VII shared a common goal: to reconcile the church with the state. But while they were able to work together initially, formalizing an agreement in 1801, relations between them rapidly deteriorated. In 1809, Napoleon ordered the Pope’s arrest.

Ambrogio Caiani provides a pioneering account of the tempestuous relationship between the emperor and his most unyielding opponent. Drawing on original findings in the Vatican and other European archives, Caiani uncovers the nature of Catholic resistance against Napoleon’s empire; charts Napoleon’s approach to Papal power; and reveals how
the Emperor attempted to subjugate the church to his vision of modernity. Gripping and vivid, this book shows the struggle
for supremacy between two great individuals—and sheds new light on the conflict that would shape relations between the Catholic church and the modern state for centuries to come.
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Ambrogio A. Caiani was awarded one of the Literary Prize winners 2021 by The Rt Hon Dominic Grieve KC, President of the Franco-British Society, on 30th November at the House of Lords

Information about the event is available HERE. 

Ambrogio received his PhD from Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge in 2009. Since then he has taught at the universities of Greenwich, York and Oxford, and is currently Senior Lecturer in Modern European History at the University of Kent. Ambrogio's main research interests are Revolutionary France and Napoleonic Italy and his work has been published in several leading academic journals. He the author of, To Kidnap a Pope: Napoleon and Pius VII 1800–1815 published in 2021 by Yale University Press and of Louis XVI and the French Revolution 1789-1792 published by Cambridge University Press in 2012. His most recent book is Losing a Kingdom, Gaining the World;
 
The Catholic Church in the Age of Revolution and Democracy which was released by Head Zeus on 12 October 2023.
The Franco-British Society Literary Award Judges:
  • Dr Cynthia Gamble, Honorary Research Fellow, University of Exeter 
  • Munro Price, Professor of Modern European History, University of Bradford
  • Richard Vinen, Professor of History, King's College London 

The Franco-British Society Literary Award winners:
​The winners list from 1982 to 2022 is available HERE 

Prize winners 2021

To kidnap a Pope: Napoleon and Pius VII, by Ambrogio A. Caiani (Yale University Press) - Will be awarded on 1st November 2023 at the House of Lords. Information available HERE. 

The fall of Robespierre: 24 hours in Revolutionary Paris, by Colin Jones (Oxford University Press)

Prize winner 2020

Art is a tyrant: the unconventional life of Rosa Bonheur, by Catherine Hewitt (Icon Books)

Prize winner 2019 

King of the world: a life of Louis XIV, by Philip Mansel (Allen Lane)