The Strange Story Of Napoleon's Wallpaper

In 1815, after his defeat at the battle of Waterloo, Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled to the remote island of St Helena. During most of his exile, Napoleon lived in Longwood House with his small retinue of about 20 people - as well as servants.

Although Napoleon often dreamed of escape, he was never to leave the island, and he died there six years later in 1821. The doctors who carried out the post-mortem on Napoleon were of the opinion that a perforated stomach ulcer which had turned cancerous was the main cause of his death.

And there the matter might have rested, except that a number of his staff had kept locks of Napoleon's hair, which were subsequently passed down the generations. One of those samples of hair, when analysed using modern scientific techniques in the 1960s, was found to contain significant quantities of arsenic.