Revenge Is A Dish Best Served Cold

This week we hand our blog to one of our authors, who is reviewing a book.

I’m a lover of historical fiction, so when I heard about this book it was an easy decision to buy it. What made it even more attractive was the fact that many of the people who are used as characters in the book were real. They lived and breathed and did many of the things that the author attributes to them.
 
While some of the story may be fiction, a lot of it is historical fact.
 
Act of Oblivion, by Robert Harris, is set during what was known in England as “The Restoration”. That period after the end of the rule of Oliver Cromwell, when the monarchy was restored to England (Useless trivia- it was still known as England even though it included Scotland, Wales and Ireland. It wouldn’t become “Britain” until 1707).
 
When Oliver Cromwell died, it was his wish that his son, Richard, succeed him as “Lord Protector” (King in everything but name). However, the English establishment didn’t fancy that. If they were going to have a King, they wanted it to be a proper King and the rightful heir to the throne.
 
So, Charles Stewart, son of the executed King Charles I,  was invited to come back from his exile in Flanders. There was the thorny issue of what to do about the people who had fought against his father, so The Act of Oblivion was passed by Parliament. This guaranteed that a free pardon was granted to all who had fought on the side of Parliament during the English Civil War, with the exception of a small group of people.
 
That small group of people included the men who had sat in judgement on Charles I at his trial and those who had signed the warrant for his execution, about 50 or so men. A couple gave themselves up in the hope of receiving Royal mercy, some had already died of other causes, some were living in exile in Europe, and some had gone into hiding in England. At least two fled to the American colonies, where there were many allies of the Parliamentary cause and its Puritan religious supporters.
 
The book starts in 1660, just after Charles II returned to the throne, with the arrival in New England of Colonel Edward Whalley and Colonel William Goffe. They are two former soldiers in the Parliamentary Army (Roundheads, as they were known because of their dome shaped helmets) who are on the run under threat of execution, having been two of the signatories of the execution warrant of the late King Charles. Whalley also happens to be Goffe’s father-in-law. They were real people.
 
As well as being a soldier, Goffe is also a zealous Puritan, with a knack for giving rousing sermons. Whalley, while being Christian, is less committed to the Puritan ideal.

Much of the story follows their travels around the fledgling colonies of Massachusetts and Connecticut as they try to evade capture and are protected by likeminded colonists.
 
In London we have Richard Naylor. He is fictitious, but as Harris says in his introduction to the book, if you have a hunt, you must have a hunter and Naylor represents all the real life hunters of the wanted men.
 
Naylor is a bitter man and is relentless in his pursuit of Whalley and Goffe, against whom he has a personal grudge, as well as the others under sentence of death. He is Clerk to the Privy Council, which allows him to wield enormous power. However, he finds that his power is limited by geography and what he can do in England to intimidate people he isn’t able to do in America, despite it being under English rule. London is a long way away and it would take a lot of English troops to enforce the warrants that Naylor is carrying.

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"You don’t have to know much about the English history of this period to enjoy this book"

I think we are supposed to feel some sympathy for the characters of Whalley and Goffe. They were coerced into signing the execution warrant by Cromwell (which really happened) and see themselves more as victims. However, I had little sympathy for them. There is a considerable difference between doing one’s duty as a soldier and signing a death warrant because you have been ordered to. do so. But that is just my opinion.
 
You don’t have to know much about the English history of this period to enjoy this book. Pretty much all the historical information is skilfully fed into the narrative along the way. It is very well researched.
 
If you are an American and would like to understand a little more about what life was like in your country in the second half of the 17th century, then you may find this book of interest. You may also discover why your country has some of the political and religious views that are held by some people today, because history does sometimes repeat itself. You will also find out how New Amsterdam became New York.
 
The pace of the book is what I would describe as “steady”. There are points of high action, but there are also long passages when not a lot happens, which is why I have only given the book 4 stars rather than 5. Whalley and Goffe are in hiding for lengthy periods and it’s difficult to inject much pace into those sections. However, they are important when it comes to understanding the historical and religious context of the English Civil War, as Edward Whalley starts to write a memoir of Cromwell, which tells us a lot about the man..
 
Harris is a very successful author, so it is not for me, a mere reader, to comment on his writing skills, but I can tell you that I never lost interest in the book, and I also learnt a lot, sometimes without even realising that I was learning things.
 
I would recommend this book to readers of historical fiction on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. If you want to know more about “Act of Oblivion” by Robert Harris, just click the cover image or use this link.

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