SOME TIME after the event, Napoleon Bonaparte famously recounted that upon landing on the southern French coast on Wednesday March 1, 1815, from his exile on Elba, he and his followers were soon met by a small crowd of locals.
Among them was the local mayor, who upon seeing how few made up the former and soon to be restored French emperor’s party, told him: “We were just beginning to be quiet and happy; now you are going to stir us all up again.”
A student of history, one wonders if former prime minister Boris Johnson will ponder this particular historical parallel as he wends his way back to Britain via a first class transatlantic flight from his luxury holiday in the Caribbean, having made his intention to return to Number 10 after just 44 days of his own exile from high office?
JOHN WIGHT pays tribute to the day in history when Randolph Turpin dealt the world of boxing an almighty blow
ANGUS REID recommends a very unusual documentary: a love story between two disillusioned journalists
A remarkable excavation in the Netherlands has raised hopes of locating the grave of Louis XIV’s famed captain of the King’s Musketeers. JOHN CALLOW introduces the real figure behind the hero of Dumas’s novels
The Tory conference was a pseudo-sacred affair, with devotees paying homage in front of Thatcher’s old shrouds — and your reporter, initially barred, only need mention he’d once met her to gain access. But would she consider what was on offer a worthy legacy, asks ANDREW MURRAY


