The older I get the more I turn to historical fiction to get my history fix. Yes, I know I should read Gibbon's six volume History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. But I'm afraid that ship has sailed. Hillary Mantel and Andrew Miller are more my speed.
Act of Oblivion, by master storyteller Robert Harris (author of Munich and Fatherland) is my kind of historical fiction—based on facts, imaginatively written, and compelling. Harris tells the story of the regicides, the British involved in the execution of King Charles I in 1649. Two colonels who signed Charles' death warrant have fled to America (the Connecticut Valley, to be exact) because now that the Royalists are back in power, the Act of Oblivion demands the regicides be captured, drawn and quartered. I'd flee too. On their tails is the megalomaniacal Richard Nayler, clerk to the Privy Council. Hidden by sympathizers in what will become New England, the two men manage to stay hidden sometimes mere steps from Nayler. Harris juxtaposes the manhunt scenes with depictions of the lives of the colonel's relatives in London. Will Nayler find his white whales? Hard to say. You just have to read it.
Last week I was in the store early, by myself, when a retired history professor came in. I talked to him about Act of Oblivion. His response: "I have Irish ancestors...of course I know about the regicides. Not only that, but did you know that in New Haven, two streets are named after Colonels Goffe and Whalley. And, there's a cave above the town called 'The Judges' Cave' because that's, allegedly, where the judges hid out during part of their escape." I didn't know that! Nine-thirty in the morning, and my day was made.
Carin Pratt is one of the remarkably knowledgeable crew at the Norwich Bookstore—and an ardent recommender of books. Before she landed in these parts, she spent 27 years at CBS News, including two decades as the executive producer of Face the Nation.