Act of Oblivion: The Thrilling new novel from the no. 1 bestseller Robert Harris

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This is historical fiction but a pretty accurate retelling of the lives of two of the regicides of Charles I, Ned Whalley and Will Goffe. Ned was the cousin of Oliver Cromwell, and Will, his son-in-law, married to daughter Frances. When Charles II was returned as King, he vowed to hunt down the 59 men who signed his father's death warrant, despite pardoning all others (this was the Act of Oblivion). Ned and Will escaped to America, hoping to find refuge among the Puritans there. America in the 1660s was sparsely settled. Two men on the run are housed initially by the Puritans (who sympathized with the anti-monarchists) but must flee when Nayler arrives in America to pursue them. The tale involves maritime travel from London to Massachusetts to the rugged terrain of the Connecticut wilderness. Robert Harris is one of my favourite authors, so a new book by him is always something to look forward to. This one sounded particularly interesting, dealing with a manhunt that takes place in 17th century New England, a setting Harris has never written about before.

VI. The like by reason of any Commission by the late or present King, or by Colour of any Ordinance of one or both Houses of Parliament, or the late Protector, &c. Oblivion' tells a fictionalised version of a story based around (overwhelmingly) real characters and encompassing real events of the time.

The problem is that this is the majority of the novel because there isn’t a great deal to the story itself. It takes an age for Nayler to get across the pond to the colonies and even longer for anything further to happen. And then nothing really happens after that until the cheesy Hollywood-esque ending. An Officer and a Spy is the story of French officer Georges Picquart, a historical character, who is promoted in 1895 to run France's Statistical Section, its secret intelligence division. He gradually realises that Alfred Dreyfus has been unjustly imprisoned for acts of espionage committed by another man who is still free and still spying for the Germans. He risks his career and his life to expose the truth. Harris was inspired to write the novel by his friend Roman Polanski, who adapted it as a film in 2019. [ citation needed] Dictator (2015) [ edit ] XXVIII. This act not to extend to goods to be restored upon the act for repeal of two act for sequestrations. Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial?

Harris hinted at a third, far less obvious, allusion hidden in the novel's title, and, more significantly, at a possible motive for having written the book in the first place. Blair, he said, had himself been ghostwriter, in effect, to President Bush when giving public reasons for invading Iraq: he had argued the case better than had the President himself. [8]You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. More specifically, Harris' novel is all about the pursuit of those perceived by the reinstated monarchy as regicides. The lands of the Crown and the established Church were automatically restored, but lands of Royalists and other dissenters confiscated and sold during the Civil War and interregnum were left for private negotiation or litigation, meaning that the government would not help the Loyalists in regaining their property. Disappointed Royalists commented that the Act meant "indemnity for [Charles'] enemies and oblivion for his friends". [3] Historians, on the other hand, have generally praised the King and Clarendon for the generosity and clemency of the Act, in an age not normally noted for mercy. [4] Twenty years later, during the Popish Plot, Charles tried unsuccessfully to stand against the relentless demand for the execution of Catholic priests, and reminded the public sharply of how many of them had previously benefited from his reluctance to shed blood. [5] XIX. Writs of capias utiagatum may be directed against any person. The party outlawed may sue out a scire facias against the plaintiff. XLVI. Bonds taken in his Majesty's name before May 1642 for securities of any his Majesty's receivers, not pardoned. &c.

Harris said in a U.S. National Public Radio interview that politicians like Lang and Blair, particularly when they have been in office for a long time, become divorced from everyday reality, read little and end up with a pretty limited overall outlook. When it comes to writing their memoirs, they therefore tend to have all the more need of a ghostwriter. [ citation needed]There's no doubt the world is moving into very perilous times. I'm 65 years old and my life has been almost entirely lived in a period of peace, prosperity and economic expansion. But such periods are relatively rare. Nayler is searching for them. A fictional character, created by Harris, he appears a less sympathetic person than Ned and Will, but reveals the other face of this civil war which had split the nation; a royalist supporter who had dipped his handkerchief in the king's blood and who always carried it with him.

In London, Richard Nayler, secretary of the regicide committee of the Privy Council, is charged with bringing the traitors to justice and he will stop at nothing to find them. A substantial bounty hangs over their heads for their capture—dead or alive... Roman Polanski adapted the novel as the film The Ghost Writer (2010). [ citation needed] Lustrum (2009) [ edit ] When it comes to the execution of English royalty, perhaps the most famous are the two wives of Henry VIII who met their ends at the Tower of London — Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard. The double execution of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette by guillotine in France is equally if not more famous, and countless other royals have been killed by their enemies. However, only one reigning King of England has ever been publicly executed for treason: Charles I, or Charles Stuart, in 1649. This crucial event precedes the main plot in Robert Harris's Act of Oblivion. While their struggles are very affecting, I believe it is fair to say that the novel could be cut by 100 pp. without losing any urgency. The social and political history is spot-on and the author’s material on seventeenth-century London is excellent. We receive a very nice account of the fire of London in 1666 but, curiously, relatively little on the great plague which preceded it. Since we have Defoe’s JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR we don’t need it (as historians) but one of Defoe’s central points is the breakdown of trust which follows a plague whose etiology no one then understood (it came from fleas, feeding on rats and then jumping on humans). Since the breakdown of trust in the aftermath of the civil war and the regicide is one of the author’s key themes here, one would have expected him to have made more of the plague (and also because of the religiosity of the puritans—omnipresent here—who, e.g. depended heavily on their bibles for the understanding of all aspects of experience and here—a significant plot point—expected the second coming of Jesus in 1666 that would enable Whalley and Goffe to return to England and their families). Robert Harris spent his childhood in a small rented house on a Nottingham council estate. His ambition to become a writer arose at an early age, from visits to the local printing plant where his father worked. Harris went to Belvoir High School in Bottesford, Leicestershire, [2] and then King Edward VII School, Melton Mowbray, where a hall was later named after him. There he wrote plays and edited the school magazine. Harris read English literature at Selwyn College, Cambridge, where he was elected president of the Cambridge Union and editor of Varsity, the oldest student newspaper at Cambridge University.

In 2006, Harris followed up on Pompeii with another Roman-era work, Imperium, the first novel in a trilogy centred on the life of the great Roman orator and lawyer Marcus Tullius Cicero. [ citation needed] The Ghost (2007) [ edit ] Dictator was the long-promised conclusion to the Harris Cicero trilogy. [9] It was published by Hutchinson on 8 October 2015. [10] Conclave (2016) [ edit ]