Robert Harris - Augustus Agrippa and the Birth of the Roman Empire

When it comes to power, does friendship exist at all? Robert Harris plunges us into the birth of the Roman Empire, the assassination of Julius Caesar and the rise of Augustus.

No novelist untangles the thorny web of power and politics like Robert Harris. From the terrors of the Third Reich to the intricacies of the papal Conclave, the conspiracy of the Dreyfus Affair to Machiavellian backstabbing in modern democracies, his fiction spans world history but always returns to fundamental concerns: who gets to rule and why? Does power corrupt absolutely? What does it mean to be a tyrant – and to fight against tyranny?

Now the author of the Cicero trilogy returns to the world of ancient Rome with a decades-spanning epic told from the perspective of Marcus Agrippa: builder of the Pantheon, commander of the fleet at the battle of Actium, and our guide to world-changing events starring Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, Cleopatra, and the man who dominated his life: the cunning, ruthless, and unknowable Octavius.

Robert joins us for a series of special In Conversation events to share the stories of this astonishing period of history, offer his insights into the minds of the key players, and reveal what the world of ancient Rome can tell us about the eternal nature of power.