author
Xavier Paoli
b. 1835
Best known for vivid memoirs of Europe’s crowned heads, this French police official wrote from unusually close experience. His books open a window onto royal travel, public ceremony, and the backstage world of high society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
1 Audiobook
About the author
Born in Corsica in 1833, Xavier Paoli became a French official attached to the Ministry of the Interior and later built a reputation as a protector of visiting sovereigns and other prominent figures. That unusual work put him in direct contact with many of the famous rulers and dignitaries of his time.
He is remembered today mainly for memoir-style books such as Leurs majestés, My Royal Clients, and Their Majesties as I Knew Them. In those works, he drew on personal experience to describe the kings, queens, and courtly rituals of Europe with the eye of someone who had to manage the practical side of ceremony and security.
Paoli died in 1923. For audiobook listeners, his appeal lies in that rare combination of insider access and storytelling: his writing does not just name historical figures, but shows how power looked at close range, in trains, receptions, state visits, and private encounters.