The Latest Breaking News from Napoleon

Directors of historical feature films face a difficult task. How can they make the characters familiar to an audience without reducing them to caricature? How can they make sure that knowledge of the outcome – battles won or lost, empires built then ruined – doesn’t make the story seem like…

Ridley Scott’s Napoleon biopic is released next week, but from birthplace to battlefields you can still follow in Bonaparte’s mighty footsteps

Forthcoming historical drama has been critiqued for straying away from historical truths

This article contains spoilers

Letters: Linguistics professor John O’Regan on history written in the present tense, and Simon Allen on other documentary annoyances

Saied Dai’s painting captures the former PM’s sternness and stoicism, her failure and her femininity. But it also raises questions about how artists use male traits to depict female leaders

Spooky and silly costumes for dynamic duos

If something happened centuries ago, let’s talk about it as if it happened centuries ago – not as if it was going on right now, says Adrian Chiles

Portraits by Freud, Rego and Himid come together and we go deep on a portrait of a Napoleonic battle – all in your weekly dispatch