Act of Oblivion: The Sunday Times Bestseller

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Harris is a master of historical fiction, a compelling author who brings to life the recent and ancient past -- Justin Warshaw * TLS * The narration by Tim McInnerny was excellent, with just enough change in vocal characterisations to be able to distinguish the main actors amongst quite a large cast of characters. The 1660 Act worked off a prior template. The Act of Oblivion of 1563, enacted by the Scottish Parliament, mandated that “all deede . . . contrair the Lawes of this Realme . . . and the memorie thereof . . . be expired, buryed and extinct for ever: even as the same had never bene maid . . . .” 5 Open this footnote Close this footnote 5 Id. at 181 (quoting “The Act of Oblivioun,” in 2 The Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland 535-36 (Thomas Thomson & Cosmo Innes eds., 1563)). … Open this footnote Close The 1660 Act followed suit in fashioning a state-mandated exercise in collective amnesia. It barred the populace from making malicious allegations “against any other person or persons, any Name or Names, or other Words of Reproach, any way tending to revive the Memory of the late Differences.” 6 Open this footnote Close this footnote 6 Id. at 243 (quoting An Act of Free and General Pardon, Indemnity and Oblivion, 12 Car. II c. 11 (1660)). … Open this footnote Close And it had teeth—Meyler reports that anyone who violated it was “forced to pay the aggrieved individual a fairly significant fine.” 7 Open this footnote Close this footnote 7 Id. … Open this footnote Close August 1660: Lords reminded of Bills, including "The Act of General Pardon, Indemnity, and Oblivion". [17] Harris displays an impressive grasp of the historical context without taxing his readers by showing his 'workings'. * Church Times *

August 1660: Bills passed. One of which was "An Act of Free and General Pardon, Indemnity, and Oblivion". [22] There’s a passage in Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate in which the author imagines the parallel lives of a man and his murderer. “If one man is fated to be killed by another,” he writes, “it would be interesting to trace the gradual convergence of their paths. At the start they might be miles away from one another … and yet eventually we are bound to meet, we can’t avoid it…” This is the idea that animates Robert Harris’s latest novel, Act of Oblivion, which, although it is set in the 17th century, sends the reader on a riotously enjoyable and thoroughly modern manhunt that weaves between Restoration-era London and the wilds of pre-revolutionary New England.As Nayler arrives in America, the pace of the novel increases, the sense of an inevitable meeting propelling the narrative forward. The chapters, paragraphs, even the sentences become shorter as the colonels seek to evade their monomaniacal pursuer. As always with Harris, there’s a delicious sense of being in the hands of a master, of watching as the pieces of the narrative puzzle fall into place. Act of Oblivion is a fine novel about a divided nation, about invisible wounds that heal slower than visible ones. Like Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant , it feels like an important book for our particular historical moment, one that shows the power of forgiveness and the intolerable burden of long-held grudges. The most richly accomplished of the brothers’ pairings to date—and given Connelly’s high standards, that’s saying a lot.

Harris, deft as ever, weaves a hefty amount of historical fact into the narrative, politics, religion, colonial life, family ties - as well as themes of forgiveness and reconciliation. Underneath it all though is the remorseless and building propulsion of hunter and prey * New Statesman * XXIV. The penalty upon any person that shall within three years use any words of reproach or disgrace, tending to revive the memory of the late differences. Act of Oblivion is a fine novel about a divided nation, about invisible wounds that heal slower than visible ones . . . it feels like an important book for our particular historical moment, one that shows the power of forgiveness and the intolerable burden of long-held grudges * Observer * August 1660 Pardon and Oblivion, British History On-line House of Commons Journal Volume 8 (www.british-history.ac.uk) Put this on your list of books to curl up with on a dreary winter's day. There is something deeply comforting about historical fiction, particularly one so rich in detail and intelligent in design. The slow burning plot weaves the thrill of the chase with a precise rendering of colonial America and royalist Britain.This article was amended on 30 August 2022. The Act of Oblivion was passed in 1660, not 1652 as an earlier version said. I have been waiting for most of my life for Robert Harris to write a novel that is not gripping, insightful and entertaining. I am waiting still -- Ben Macintyre * The Times * Aug 1660 Pardon and Oblivion, British History On-line House of Commons Journal Volume 8 (www.british-history.ac.uk) 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 We may, then, appear to honor Acts of Oblivion more in breach than in observance. Yet at least one aspect of the Act of Oblivion—exercised by the Executive Branch alone—presents a live concern. This takes the form of executive gaslighting, which injures the collective memory in a way that is no less effective because it is more insidious than a direct Act of Oblivion.

XV. Discharges and quietus est given in the exchequer. Accounts of the revenues of churches in Wales. Bribery, subornation, forging, debentures, &c. witnesses. Whalley begins as a pious and ruthless military commander. He’s a religious fanatic obsessed, as all Puritans in the novel are, with the idea of a Christian republic of England – a land where God rules supreme. Every quarry needs a hunter. Harris counterbalances Whalley and Goffe with Richard Nayler, the fictional secretary to the regicide committee of the privy council, who has a powerful personal reason to want them dead. Meanwhile in London, Frances, Goffe’s devoted wife and Whalley’s daughter, provides another viewpoint. The novel’s narrative structure moves to and fro between them, ultimately leading to a brisk if slightly implausible conclusion.This book is a sweeping saga set in the 1600s about the hunt for two (real) men, William Goffe and Edward Whalley, who signed the death warrant of Charles I, and their life in hiding in America. Richard Nayler is the fictional hunter of the “regicides.” The hunt begins in 1660 upon restoration of Charles II, son of Charles I, to the throne of England after the ousting and death of Oliver Cromwell. The titular Act of Oblivion pardoned the past treasons committed against the Crown, with the exception of the regicides. The two fugitives are related by marriage – Whalley is the father-in-law of Goffe. Whalley is also cousin to Oliver Cromwell. The families are the two men also feature in the narrative. So this is a negative review, however 3 stars are given. The pluses were the writing style was excellent, it wasn’t a drag to read to the point of grumbling, sighing, or eye-rolling. It had just enough to read large sections at a time. The passage of the Indemnity and Oblivion Act through the Convention Parliament was secured by Lord Clarendon, the first minister of King Charles II, and it became law on 29 August 1660 during the first year of the English Restoration.