We’re delighted to welcome international bestselling author Robert Harris to Penarth this autumn to celebrate the release of his new novel, Agrippa.

Few thriller writers have attained both critical acclaim and public devotion to the same extent as Robert Harris. He first made his name as a star journalist, becoming a well-known face on Panorama and Newsnight before being appointed political editor of The Observer aged 30. His first novel, Fatherland – an alternative-reality thriller set in a world in which Hitler had been victorious – was an immediate and phenomenal bestseller. He is now the author of sixteen bestselling novels, including Enigma, Pompeii, Conclave, Munich and most recently Precipice. His Cicero Trilogy has been called ‘the finest fictional treatment of Ancient Rome in the English Language’.

Robert returns to Ancient Rome in his new historical thriller Agrippa, a compelling exploration of friendship and power.

Agrippa:
Julius Caesar is dead, and the lives of two teenaged boys are about to be changed forever. One is Caesar’s 17-year-old nephew, Octavius, whom he has made his heir. The other is Octavius’s closest friend, Agrippa.

To claim Octavius’s inheritance, they must fight the giant figures of the Roman Empire – and, against all odds, they win. Octavius becomes the Emperor Augustus. For twenty years, they rule the world together.

Now Agrippa is fifty. Ailing and alone, betrayed by his wife’s infidelity, he takes refuge in his house on the Bay of Naples and begins to write his memoirs. Yet to stir up the past can be dangerous. From his earliest meetings with Julius Caesar, through the epic conflict with Mark Antony and Cleopatra, the great naval battle of Actium and the endless wars to expand the empire, he describes how one man has dominated his life: the cunning, ruthless, unknowable Octavius.

When it comes to power, does friendship exist at all?

Robert Harris is the author of sixteen bestselling novels: the Cicero Trilogy – Imperium, Lustrum and Dictator – Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompeii, The Ghost, The Fear Index, An Officer and a Spy, which won four prizes including the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, Conclave, Munich, The Second Sleep, V2, Act of Oblivion and Precipice. His work has been translated into forty languages and nine of his books have been adapted for cinema and television. He lives in West Berkshire with his wife, Gill Hornby.

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Saturday 5 September | 7.30 pm
The Paget Rooms, Penarth
Tickets: £28.00 includes a SIGNED hardback copy of Agrippa (RRP: £22.00)* / £15.00 Event Only** / £5.00 Student Ticket / £5.00 Inclusive Ticket