His parents had lived apart for most of his childhood and he had at the same time been separated from his beloved elder brother, Napoleon Louis – the latter lived in Italy with their father, Louis, the emperor Napoleon's brother and ex-king of Holland. Louis Napoleon was the product of a broken home. His socialist, Saint-Simonian sentiments were forged there in the difficult years of exile when he was searching for a role to play in the world post Napoleon I. His visit to the country and his frequenting of liberal circles were to a have profound effect on his political make-up. It is his stay in, and relationship with, Britain which I propose to discuss here, a Britain whose mythical reputation was based on what at the time was called liberty – indeed, his mother Hortense in her memoirs claimed that it was clearly visible there – and a London renowned as a home for exiles. The rest of his life was spent in exile, whether in Italy, Germany, Switzerland, England or (exceedingly briefly) the United States. Out of his sixty-five years on this planet, Louis Napoleon, future-Napoleon III, spent only twenty-eight of them in France.
