{"id":2005,"date":"2007-07-23T13:08:04","date_gmt":"2007-07-23T13:08:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/2007\/07\/imperium\/"},"modified":"2007-07-23T13:08:04","modified_gmt":"2007-07-23T13:08:04","slug":"imperium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/2007\/07\/imperium\/","title":{"rendered":"Imperium"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/rcm-uk.amazon.co.uk\/e\/cm?t=friday05-21&#038;o=2&#038;p=8&#038;l=as1&#038;asins=0099406314&#038;fc1=000000&#038;lc1=0000ff&#038;bc1=ffffff&#038;npa=1&#038;lt1=_blank&#038;IS1=1&#038;f=ifr&#038;bg1=ffffff\" width=\"120\" height=\"240\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" frameborder=\"0\" align=\"right\"><br \/>\n<\/iframe><br \/>\nImperium is the latest Robert Harris novel, and following on from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/weblog\/archive\/000947.html\">Pompeii<\/a>, he&#8217;s again set it in a Roman setting. This time, we effectively have the political life of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cicero\">Cicero<\/a> &#8211; the lawyer and politician. The book is <em>told<\/em> by <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Marcus_Tullius_Tiro\">Tiro<\/a>, Cicero&#8217;s slave and personal secretary, who, we&#8217;re told, essentially invented shorthand to record conversations accurately and quickly.<br \/>\nThe book feels as though it&#8217;s in two parts, concentrating first of Cicero&#8217;s prosecution of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gaius_Verres\">Verres<\/a> who ran amok in Sicily until finally stopped in his tracks, and his political ambitions leading to his intervention in the Catiline conspiracy.<br \/>\nHarris can&#8217;t help but draw a few allusions to modern day politics, first with some comparisons which you can only make with the war in Iraq, and then a general attack on the venality of many politicians.<br \/>\nBut I enjoyed these, and the book tells a story I really didn&#8217;t know. Julius Caesar doesn&#8217;t come out of it all that well, and other incidental characters are alluded to in a knowing manner.<br \/>\nAt the end of the book, is a brief advert for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/Ghost-Robert-Harris\/dp\/0091796261\">The Ghost<\/a>, Harris&#8217; forthcoming political thriller. We&#8217;re told that this is a return to political thrillers for him. Yet Imperium is nothing if not a political thriller itself. And a very good one. If I was being snobbish I&#8217;d say it makes a great beach read. But I&#8217;m not, and in any case, I didn&#8217;t read it on the beach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Imperium is the latest Robert Harris novel, and following on from Pompeii, he&#8217;s again set it in a Roman setting. This time, we effectively have the political life of Cicero &#8211; the lawyer and politician. The book is told by Tiro, Cicero&#8217;s slave and personal secretary, who, we&#8217;re told, essentially invented shorthand to record conversations [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2005\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}