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

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Formerly a donor to the Labour Party, he renounced his support for the party after the appointment of Guardian journalist Seumas Milne as its communications director by leader Jeremy Corbyn. [28] He now supports the Liberal Democrats. [29] Works [ edit ] Fiction [ edit ]I came across this phrase about the manhunt for them across Puritan New England, across that wilderness of a nation just being forged, and it sparked my interest," he explains. There were 59 signatories on the death warrant for Charles 1, and there is one man determined to bring them all to justice. The Indemnity and Oblivion Act fulfilled the suggestion given in the Declaration of Breda that reprisals against the establishment which had developed during the English Interregnum would be restricted to those who had officiated in the regicide of King Charles I.

Harris, Robert. "Robert Harris: 'The Ghost' of Tony Blair". NPR.org. NPR . Retrieved 9 December 2015. The men being hunted are Edward Whalley and his son-in-law William Goffe, both of whom had been colonels in Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army, fighting for the Parliamentarians against Charles I’s Royalists. When that war ended in a Parliamentarian victory, Whalley and Goffe, along with fifty-seven other men, signed the death warrant that led to the king’s execution. Oliver Cromwell then ruled as Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland until his death in 1658. Harris appeared on the American PBS show Charlie Rose on 10 February 2012. Harris discussed his novel The Fear Index which he likened to a modern-day Gothic novel along the lines of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Harris also discussed the adaptation of his novel, The Ghost that came out as the movie, The Ghost Writer directed by Roman Polanski. [25] Columnist [ edit ] In 2007, after Blair resigned, Harris dropped his other work to write The Ghost. The title refers both to a professional ghostwriter, whose lengthy memorandum forms the novel, and to his immediate predecessor who, as the action opens, has just drowned in gruesome and mysterious circumstances. The dead man has been ghosting the autobiography of a recently unseated British prime minister called Adam Lang, a thinly veiled version of Blair. [6] The fictional counterpart of Cherie Blair is depicted as a sinister manipulator of her husband. Harris told The Guardian before publication: "The day this appears a writ might come through the door. But I would doubt it, knowing him." [7]

Gotcha! The Government, the Media and the Falklands Crisis. London: Faber and Faber, January 1983 ISBN 978-0-571-13052-8 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. But now, ten years after Charles’ beheading, the royalists have returned to power. Under the provisions of the Act of Oblivion, the fifty-nine men who signed the king’s death warrant and participated in his execution have been found guilty in absentia of high treason. Some of the Roundheads, including Oliver Cromwell, are already dead. Others have been captured, hung, drawn, and quartered. A few are imprisoned for life. But two have escaped to America by boat.

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 ] August 1660 Pardon and Oblivion, British History On-line House of Commons Journal Volume 8 (www.british-history.ac.uk) XV. Discharges and quietus est given in the exchequer. Accounts of the revenues of churches in Wales. Bribery, subornation, forging, debentures, &c. witnesses. Over half the Regicides have since died but, of the remaining survivors, two names are highest on the most wanted list: Edward Whalley and William Goffe, who are suspected to have fled to the New England colonies across the Atlantic. Richard Nayler is appointed by the Crown to hunt down these men and bring them the King’s justice. And so the chase begins - will Whalley and Goffe get away with it? Of all his novels, Act Of Oblivion is perhaps the most morally ambiguous, reflecting its author's own conflicted emotions.Among those who ran for their lives, escaping to the American colonies, were Col. Edward Whalley and his son-in-law, Col. William Goff, both of the disbanded New Model Army. While not much is known of this pair's actual encounters in 17th century New England, the author has given us an historical account with quite a bit of fictional padding to let us share their predicament. Their very survival depended upon the Puritan communities which kept them in safe houses as well as the beneficial help they received from native Indians. Since the colonies were subject to the Crown, the pair kept on the move to avoid detection which was a daily threat for them. The execution of the king was the defining event of this struggle. Harris chooses to focus instead on the lives in exile of two of the regicides, Goffe and Edward Whalley. In 1660, they fled to America, where many of the colonists were Puritans with no love for the king. Both men were distinguished soldiers. Whalley was Oliver Cromwell’s cousin, a trusted member of the Lord Protector’s inner circle, and Goffe was Whalley’s son-in-law. We know tantalisingly little about their lives in America. They lived in hiding, in constant fear of arrest by the royalist agents who were searching for them. This is what we novelists do, after all: we make stuff up. A retelling of historical events would be a work of non-fiction. It is up to the storyteller to write what is not recorded. To depict scenes that may or may not have happened. To write dialogue that was not overheard or written down. This invention, this bringing to vivid life the actions of the dead, is the exciting part of writing historical fiction. And it is surely what makes the end result an exciting read. We can never know what was said in those candlelit rooms four hundred plus years ago. We can never know for certain if a soldier acquitted himself bravely on the battlefield or stood rooted to the spot in terror. We can’t be certain the executioner did or did not weep as he took the life of a young man caught up in the machinations of church and state. These are the things we as writers must imagine and then write. I don’t know if Robert Harris (or any other historical fiction writers such as Ben Kane, Manda Scott, Rose Tremain) have a particular system by which they achieve this. No doubt they all have quite different and unique methods of creating these details, these experiences, these intimate stories that we can only, truly, guess at. What I am sure of is that we all share the same goal, which is to make the difference between facts and fiction in our books invisible. Undetectable. Seamless. Robert Harris succeeds brilliantly at this. For myself, I know I have achieved my aim when I reread my work and I can no longer tell which bits I learned from research and which bits I made up. A bloke’s book?

XXVIII. This act not to extend to goods to be restored upon the act for repeal of two act for sequestrations. Richard Nayler is committed, determined and totally single minded - a true zealot , who is determined to bring to justice all 59 signatories of the death warrant of Charles 1. His prime targets, Colonel Edward Whalley and his son-in-law, Colonel William Goffe have fled to America where they are hidden by Puritan sympathisers. The identity of the duo's pursuers has been lost in the mists of time, so Harris invented Privy Council clerk Richard Nayler who travels to New England where the men are hiding among Puritan communities.

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