Act of Oblivion: The Sunday Times Bestseller

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This article was amended on 30 August 2022. The Act of Oblivion was passed in 1660, not 1652 as an earlier version said.

One of the challenges of writing about this period is that the intricacies of religious faith and faction can seem distant and abstruse to a modern audience. Goffe is a religious man – he had wanted to become a minister before the war intervened – but Harris doesn’t allow himself to become hung up on the niceties of Christian doctrine. Rather, he makes a broader point about the position of the colonels in New England: the simplicity of their faith and anti-monarchical feeling finds a natural home among the dissenters and Puritans of the New World. The impulses that would animate the revolution a hundred years hence were all there in the English civil war. This does not, alas, mean that the men have an easy time of it in Massachusetts. Harris has dealt with religion and religious conflict before. Successfully in Conclave, where the election of a new pope becomes a political nailbiter. Less so in The Second Sleep, which I felt never quite worked out how to bring its ideas together in a coherent whole. Whalley and Goffe could also have been difficult characters to care about. They are/were committed Puritans with an extreme view of religion that would put many modern fundamentalists to shame. Indeed, one of the fascinating parallels with our century is that all three are convinced that God’s ends justify any means. But these are small cavils in a chase story that generally grips from start to finish. And yes, I did care. Read more

Act of Oblivion – Robert Harris

I would hardly be the first person to point out the dramatic parallels with our own age. Polarised religious sects. Fierce political debates spilling over into violence. A sense that anything was possible, for good or bad. He took a while to reply. By the time he spoke the men had gone inside. He said quietly, 'They killed the King.'

Act of Oblivion is an epic journey across continents, and a chase like no other. It is the thrilling new novel by Robert Harris. His new novel, Act of Oblivion represents his first foray into the politics of the seventeenth century. Which might seem surprising. Harris thrives on times of ideological conflict and moral challenge, and the English Civil War provides that in spades. His journal allows us to see into his uncertainties and vulnerabilities, sides of his character which are crucial to ensuring that we stay engaged.Colonel Edward Whalley and his son-in-law, Colonel William Goffe, cross the Atlantic. Having been found guilty of high treason for the murder of Charles the I, they are wanted and on the run. A reward hangs over their heads - for their capture, dead or alive. Do remember, though, that this is fiction, told from Cicero’s point of view, and (for example) Julius Caesar may not have been quite as bad as he is portrayed by Robert Harris. According to Classics teacher Olly Murphy, in his interview on the best Classics books for teenagers, Harris “does put in things which now we might say are controversial or we’re not sure about but, for the most part, his portrayal of what it would have been like for a senator going about his daily business is absolutely spot on.” It’s a tribute to Harris’s skill and research that Naylor is virtually the only invented character – he tells us this at the very start – and yet he rings as true as the others. Colonel Edward Whalley and his son-in-law, Colonel William Goffe, cross the Atlantic. They are on the run and wanted for the murder of Charles I. Under the provisions of the Act of Oblivion, they have been found guilty in absentia of high treason. Have a character whom you’re interested in, and in whom your reader is interested, and have something interesting happen to them in this world you’ve created. That’s how you start the novel. Now, the events I’m interested in are political events and the universality of political impulses, from Cicero’s Rome to 19th-century France to Russia, Germany, wherever – the same quest for power is there. Most of my characters are peripheral – a ghost writer, a secretary – they are observers of power. It’s disgraceful, but I did enjoy the Chips Channon diaries, the new first volume

In parallel strands, we follow Whalley and Goffe as they criss-cross New England, trying desperately to remain hidden, and their dedicated pursuer Richard Naylor. The year is 1660. Two men flee Britain for their lives. Edward Whalley and his son-in-law William Goffe were among those who signed Charles I’s death warrant and now Charles II wants revenge. Would you want to be a political editor now? What in the political landscape has changed most since you were?The wounds of the brutal civil war are still visible on men’s bodies”: the execution of Charles I in Whitehall, London, 1649. Illustration: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

That we do care is in part down to the extreme danger they face, and much due to Harris’s skill. Truth or legend? It’s particularly pressing when the story relates to events that took place around three hundred and fifty years ago, to people of whom we are unlikely to have heard. Hutchinson Heinemann said it is planning “a far-reaching and ambitious marketing and publicity campaign”. Publisher Helen Conford said: “We are very proud to be publishing a new novel from Robert Harris. Precipice is the latest thrilling masterwork from a writer at the top of his game. Writing about a world on the brink, once again Robert throws light on our present time. A gripping story and a work of huge ambition, I can’t wait for everyone to read it.”The novel takes its name from the The Indemnity and Oblivion Act 1660, which honoured the regime’s promise not to inflict reprisals – except for those involved in the death of the king. If you like history, Robert Harris is one of the best historical novelists around. Pompeii (about the eruption of Vesuvius), An Officer and A Spy (about the Dreyfus Affair), even Archangel (set in Soviet Russia) are fabulous thrillers that bring the past alive. But when it came to Marcus Tullius Cicero, the Roman statesman, Harris really went to town and wrote an entire trilogy about him: Imperium, Lustrum and Dictator. The reason Harris was able to do this with a degree of accuracy is because Cicero wrote so much—indeed we have Cicero to thank for large chunks of our knowledge of the Latin language. The trilogy is just a wonderful evocation of what it was like to be an ambitious person in the days of the late Roman republic, as it fell apart and became an empire.