Meet the author

Tony Boullemier was born in 1945 at Newcastle-upon-Tyne in north east England and educated at the city’s Royal Grammar School and Reading University.

He trained as a reporter with the Newcastle Journal and at 23 joined the Daily Express in London where he became one of Fleet Street’s youngest
sub-editors.

In 1975 he moved to the midlands to launch his own newspaper group. He built it into a multi-million pound business over 14 years, before selling to the International Thomson Organisation, one of the world's leading newspaper publishers.

Since then he has freelanced as a magazine producer, studied medieval history at Leicester University and military history through Holts Battlefield Tours. His sporting interests include cricket, football, skiing and golf.

He lives in an 18th Century stone house at the heart of a peaceful village with his wife and two children, all of them journalists.

Why he wrote Leonie and the last Napoleon

All journalists are convinced they have a book in them. They just need time
and inspiration. Tony was lucky to have the time. And even luckier when inspiration arrived in the shape of a battered old diary, handed down to him after his father died.

It had been kept by Leonie, his French great grandmother. She and her family had lived an extraordinary life in Paris where they knew many of the great names of the Second Empire.

When Tony researched their adventures and the amazing life of the Emperor Napoleon III, he had found his story.