Enormous fun last Saturday walking in the footsteps of France's first directly elected president and its last reigning monarch, Napoleon III. He spent many years in exile in London where he hatched his plans to become France's leading man before returning, broken, after falling from power in 1870. Terrific walking tour with @drmatthewgreen providing insights into the decadent social history of St James's. If you missed it, we're doing it again for @UnrealCityAudio - hopefully not the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce, but you never know.

Lovely read ahead of tonight's match. Harold beat the Vikings off at Stamford Bridge, only to succumb to the Normans. The 6ft 5in Haaland has something about him of the legendary Norwegian berserker who single-handedly cut down 40 Englishmen with his axe telegraph.co.uk/travel/desti…

The People’s Emperor by Edward Shawcross: 5-star review by Simon Sebag Montefiore Napoleon III has long been overshadowed by the legend of his uncle Napoleon I – even though both failed spectacularly. Biographers of him have tended to repeat the same old myth set by Karl Marx: that the Napoleons appeared twice, “first time as tragedy, the second time as farce”. And yet Napoleon III ruled France longer than any other leader after the ancien régime. He was the first head of state directly elected, the inventor of modern popular politics, the first to understand that democracy – and working-class voters – could be conservative; he made France great again, modernised Paris, unleashed stock-market capitalism, expanded French railways, built the Suez Canal, and fostered an alliance with Britain. For 20 years, this contradictory statesman – a liberal romantic and a conservative autocrat – fascinated and dominated Europe. His life, as Edward Shawcross makes clear in The People’s Emperor, was flamboyant, awash with dramatic reversals and wild sex. telegraph.co.uk/books/non-fi…