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Once on the island and right up to his departure for greater things 300 days later, the sovereign of Elba was regularly sought out by English travellers. Remarkably enough, Napoleon very often graced the petitioners with audiences, particularly if they were Whig politicians. As we see from Napoleon’s own remarks, there were two main reasons. First, and most important, he was testing the political waters not only in London but also in Paris (his visitors had often come from the French capital). As usual for him, information was key. How were the Bourbons received? What were people saying in the faubourgs? Had they forgotten him? Second, Napoleon used the conversations to set the record straight as to his military career. Despite certain very positive liberal biographies of Napoleon dating from as early as 1797 and 1803/4, his reputation in Britain was poor notably because in 1803 he had been accused of war crimes in Egypt. Stories of the euthanasia of plagued troops and the murder of POWs at Jaffa during the Egyptian and Syrian campaign were not just recounted in scurrilous pamphlets but also in serious histories. Napoleon’s British visitors were interested not only in these episodes but also in Napoleon’s brush with Islam, particularly as to whether he had converted to that faith. Though some of the accounts remained only in manuscript form, others were published shortly after Napoleon’s death (this was for reasons of propriety – they were, after all, private conversations). Napoleon himself in Torbay heading for St Helena in July 1815 was to declare that one of the conversations (the biggest scoop in this paper) was the final straw that made him leave Elba. This paper is a presentation of recently discovered accounts of British interviews with Napoleon on Elba, and Napoleon’s own obsessions and ripostes to British Napoleonic talking points.