Agrippa by Robert Harris

 

Oir rating 4.5⭐s

384 pages. First published 2026

You can buy Agrippa...here

You can find out more about Robert Harris...here

• The Blurb...

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?

• Our Review...

I like Robert Harris as an author, probably in my top three. I can think of only one book of his that was mediocre in my opinion,  (The Second Sleep.) It was a clever premise but the story didn't match up to the big idea. My two favourites are Fatherland (great premise, great story) and Enigma (didn't need a premise as it was all true but again great story.) So where does Agrippa sit in the cannon of Robert Harris work.. Short answer, along with the rest of his Roman histories It's right up there. When Harris writes historical fiction he is very good, when writes Roman historical fiction he is very, very good. His past Roman novels, Pompeii together with his Cicero Trilogy (Imperium, Lustrum and Dictator) all set a very high bar which he matches with Agrippa.

Having read his Roman books I think that Robert Harris is very much influenced by my favourite book. I, Claudius by Robert Graves (click link for review.) Which I think is a good thing 

The story is a first person narrative of Agrippa, the best friend of Octavius, who happens to be Julius Ceaser's nephew. As they grow it becomes obvious together they are better than the sum of their parts. The cunning Octavius is not physically strong and while he can command military it is definitely not his strong point. While Agrippa is his mirror opposite. Together they are ying and yang that make a perfect circle, much like Brian Clough and Peter Taylor at Nottingham Forest in the 1980s, or the dwarf and the muscle bound brute that made up Master Blaster in Mad Max3. 

When Cesear is murdered, a teenage Octavius is unexpectedly named heir to the Empire. However the great gift will not just be given. He will have to fight the great General Mark Anthony and navigate the even more dangerous enemies in the Senate. At least he can see Mark Anthony coming. Octavius is forced to rely on Agrippa, his Louka Brazi as they fight their to the top in the Roman game of thrones. But just as Clough and Taylor and Master Blaster eventually ended in entropy so might the same happen to the boyhood friends? 

The pressure on the two of them is immense and jealousy is a crow bar to even the strongest friendship. More so when Agrippa learns more of his own history.

Harris has a wonderful gift of pacing and depth. His one liners about history, politics and life in general just capture the zeitgeist of Rome (and of today also) just perfectly. Hence why I have included so many in the Selected Quotes section. His gift is enough history and facts so as to be accurate and interesting but not getting bogged down in detail. Reading Harris's history novels is a good way to learn about history. They give a real sense of immersion, while not losing the scale of times. And at the end it's all little clearer and infinitely interesting.

• Selected Quotes..

I am known – and have been for fifty years, ever since I was hauled by my heels from my mother’s corpse – as Agrippa.

The first rule in battle is to hold the line, whatever the cost. A fleeing army is defenceless.

All power depends on force. All force depends on money.

To lose a father to whom one has been close must be a terrible sadness for any son. And yet to lose a father from whom one has been estranged may perhaps be even worse.

power is like a muscle. It must be exercised constantly, otherwise it will turn flabby and weak.

Ignore the historians of warfare, with their neat blocks and arrows set down carefully on maps years afterwards. All battles are chaotic.

 I was a soldier not a politician. He cut me off with a wave of his hand. – These days you cannot be one and not the other. Politics is warfare in civilian clothes.

Hypocrisy is the essence of diplomacy.

Yet the truth was, I trusted no one, not even my wife. Thus does power warp us.

Power makes monsters of us all.

Like many young men, he did not allow his iAuggnorance to curb his eloquence.

I looked around my comfortable room, in my comfortable house, on my comfortable island, and realised I was living a comfortable death.

It was a choice between the bear and the fox. And in politics there is no choice. It has to be the fox.

• If You Liked This You May Like...

Augustus by John Williams

Memoirs of Hadrian by Margueritte Yourcenar

The First Man in Rome by Colleen McCollough

I Claudius by Robert Graves

 

Rating 5⭐s

416 pages

First published 1934

You can buy I, Claudius...here

You can find out more about Robert Graves...here

• The Blurb...

Despised for his weakness and regarded by his family as little more than a stammering fool, the nobleman Claudius quietly survives the bloody purges and mounting cruelty of the imperial Roman dynasties. In I, Claudius he watches from the sidelines to record the reigns of its emperors: from the wise Augustus and his villainous wife Livia to the sadistic Tiberius and the insane excesses of Caligula. Written in the form of Claudius' autobiography, this is the first part of Robert Graves's brilliant account of the madness and debauchery of ancient Rome.

With an introduction by Barry Unsworth

• Our Review...

Claudius was born into a great family. A descendant of both Julius Caeser and Mark Anthony but alas he was lame, partially deaf and with a stammer. However his curse was also his blessing. Because of his failings he was never seen as a potential contender for the title of Roman Emperor, however due to his family connections he was always in the room. His calling was to be an historian, which puts him in the perfect position for the author to choose him to be our "unreliable" author. The historical record is correct, the names, dates and battles are correct. The only point of conjecture is what the characters thought and felt, and the author conjures up the characters with such tone and personality as to become very real to the reader.

Thus we learn all the court intrigues through three generations of Roman Emperors. Augustus the practical one, Tiberius the depraved one and Caligula the absolutely bonkers one.

We see through Claudius's eyes the life and times of Imperial Rome. There are orgies, and gladiators and plots and depravity. The body count is huge and all through the decades Its feels like we are being given all the gossip from the most powerful family in the world by our mate who is telling us all this over a pint at the pub. 

My favourite character is Livia, Claudius's scheming grandmother. From now on whenever I see a debate about the most evil female character in literary fiction on social media, I am going to throw Livia's hat into the ring. She is the ultimate wrong 'un. For me she takes the crown from Cruella Deville by knock out in the first round. No spoilers, I will let you uncover her wicked ways for yourself.

I must mention the BBC adaption for TV in the 1970s, with a stellar cast of Derek Jacobi, Sian Phillips, John Hurt, Patrick Stewart, Bernard Hill, Peter Bowles, Kevin McInally. It was a wonderful production. I'm afraid that the BBC couldn't do something similar today. But no matter how good the TV show, the book was still better. 

Yes it is 2000 year old history and there are some instances where it is very apparent that this is a very, very different society to todays. However for the vast majority of the tale, the reader feels very "in the moment." Imagine a Tory government cabinet member from in 2010 and the glorious rise to power to the scandal riddled collapse and chaos of 2024. Now imagine this intelligent and eloquent but non descript cabinet member telling you everything that went on from the affairs, scandals and powers grabs. All this from someone who was actually in the room when the big stuff happened. That's how up to date this still feels. Human emotions never get outdated they are timeless.

If you look at the "If you liked this, then you may like..." section you will see that I have recommended Wolf Hall set in the Tudor area of England and The Godfather set in the 1950s of New York. Not very much like Rome AD34 you say? Yes but the politics of family, time, dynasty, power, money and death are very much the same.  There is a reason why Hilary Mantel loves this book. It is basically Wolf Hall set 1500 years earlier.

I first read this book as a 16 yr old studying for my Classical Studies O level. Yes I am that old. This book along with The Iliad and to a lesser extent the Odyssey fired my passion for reading in general and the classical period in particular.

Loved it then. Love it still.

• Selected Quotes...

I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus this-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles), who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as ‘Claudius the Idiot’, or ‘That Claudius’, or ‘Claudius the Stammerer’, or ‘Clau-Clau-Claudius’, or at best as ‘Poor Uncle Claudius’, A.D. 41 am now about to write this strange history of my life; starting from my earliest childhood and continuing year by year until I reach the fateful point of change where, some eight years ago, at the age of fifty-one, I suddenly found myself caught in what I may call the ‘golden predicament’ from which I have never since become disentangled.

Augustus ruled the world, but Livia ruled Augustus.

Most women are inclined to set a modest limit to their ambitions; a few rare ones set a bold limit. But Livia was unique in setting no limit at all to hers,

The gift of independence once granted cannot be lightly taken away again.

He was always boasting of his ancestors, as stupid people do who are aware that they have done nothing themselves to boast about.

To use the majesty of the law for revenging any petty act of private spite is to make a public confession of weakness, cowardice, and an ignoble spirit.

• If You Liked This, Then You May Like...

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantell

Imperium by Robert Harris

The Godfather by Mario Puzo

• About The Author...

Robert Graves (1895-1985) was an English poet, translator, and novelist, one of the leading English men of letters in the twentieth century. He fought in World War I and won international acclaim in 1929 with the publication of his memoir of the First World War, Good-bye to All That. After the war, he was granted a classical scholarship at Oxford and subsequently went to Egypt as the first professor of English at the University of Cairo. He is most noted for his series of novels about the Roman emperor Claudius and his works on mythology, such as The White Goddess.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

 

⭐⭐⭐⭐

You can buy The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks...Here

You can find out more about Rebecca Skloot...Here

• The Blurb...

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. Born a poor black tobacco farmer, her cancer cells – taken without asking her – became a multimillion-dollar industry and one of the most important tools in medicine. Yet Henrietta’s family did not learn of her ‘immortality’ until more than twenty years after her death, with devastating consequences . . .

Rebecca Skloot’s moving account is the story of the life, and afterlife, of one woman who changed the medical world forever. Balancing the beauty and drama of scientific discovery with dark questions about who owns the stuff our bodies are made of, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is an extraordinary journey in search of the soul and story of a real woman, whose cells live on today in all four corners of the world.

• Our Review...

I read this book as part of the 52 books in 52 weeks challenge. This week's prompt was "women in STEM." STEM refers to Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths. You can view my list for the year...Here

The weekly prompts are great for driving me out of my comfort reading zones. I don't normally read non-fiction for much the same reason as I do not watch the news. I know the world is an awful place and I don't want to be reminded of it. I prefer fiction. It's a destination I can escape to. Non-fiction aka Real-Life is the place I want to escape from. 

And so to this meticulously researched story of Henrietta Lacks, a poor, uneducated, inbred African-American. Some cells were taken from her while she was being treated for cancer. Henrietta died but her cells became the first to be reproduced in a lab in perpetuity. Hence she achieved a form of immortality. In addition the cells have been traded and researched the world over and thanks to Henrietta numerous cures for various life ending diseases have been found. Isn't that great you ask? Well yes and no.

If it was all altruistic, it would all be fine and dandy but it's not. Some companies are making millions from Henrietta's cells. Again this would be ok if Henrietta's family shared in the financial bonanza but they don't. The doctors in the US in the 1950s didn't have to ask for consent to take and use her cells. Reading this book will break your heart as you read about her family's struggles with poverty, lack of education, crime, addiction etc knowing full well if justice was served Henrietta's family would have been lifted out of cess pool of poverty. Henrietta would have approved of this. Someone is getting immensely rich to this day because of this and it isn't her family. Her family have been treated like a natural resource, Like a free oil well. So they don't get any money, and in the shambles that is American health-care they don't even get free health care. Thank God for the NHS, the UKs greatest achievement. 

The author does a wonderful job of tying the various strands of scientific research, corporate dirty dealings and the human story of Henrietta's family together. These are so diverse subject lines that this is no mean feat. In particular she tells the tale of Deborah, Henrietta's daughter and her fight for recognition of her mother's contribution to medical science. Deborah is uneducated but passionate. The part where she finds out about her sister and what happened her sister will absolutely ruin you. 

This book will leave you in awe of medical science, outraged at capitalist greed and heartbroken at the poor people at the bottom of society who pay the price. 

I have no plans to read any more non-fiction in the near future my soul couldn't bear the sadness.

• Selected Quotes...

Henrietta died in 1951 from a vicious case of cervical cancer, he told us. But before she died, a surgeon took samples of her tumor and put them in a petri dish. Scientists had been trying to keep human cells alive in culture for decades, but they all eventually died. Henrietta’s were different: they reproduced an entire generation every twenty-four hours, and they never stopped. They became the first immortal human cells ever grown in a laboratory.

if our mother cells done so much for medicine, how come her family can’t afford to see no doctors? Don’t make no sense. People got rich off my mother without us even knowin about them takin her cells, now we don’t get a dime. I used to get so mad about that to where it made me sick and I had to take pills. But I don’t got it in me no more to fight. I just want to know who my mother was.

Slowly, a multibillion-dollar industry selling human biological materials was born.

What we do know is that today, Invitrogen sells HeLa products that cost anywhere from $100 to nearly $10,000 per vial. A search of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office database turns up more than seventeen thousand patents involving HeLa cells. And there’s no way to quantify the professional gain many scientists have achieved with the help of HeLa.

“but they made millions! It’s not fair! She’s the most important person in the world and her family living in poverty. If our mother so important to science, why can’t we get health insurance?”

• About The Author...

Rebecca Skloot is an award-winning science writer whose articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine; O, The Oprah Magazine; Discover; and others. She has worked as a correspondent for NPR’s Radiolab and PBS’s NOVA scienceNOW, and is a contributing editor at Popular Science magazine and guest editor of The Best American Science Writing 2011. She is a former Vice President of the National Book Critics Circle and has taught creative nonfiction and science journalism at the University of Memphis, the University of Pittsburgh, and New York University. Her debut book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, took more than ten years to research and write, and became an instant New York Times bestseller. She has been featured on numerous television shows, including CBS Sunday Morning and The Colbert Report. Her book has received widespread critical acclaim, with reviews appearing in The New Yorker, Washington Post, Science, Entertainment Weekly, People, and many others. It won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize and the Wellcome Trust Book Prize, and was named The Best Book of 2010 by Amazon.com, and a Best Book of the Year by Entertainment Weekly; O, The Oprah Magazine; The New York Times; Washington Post; US News & World Report; and numerous others.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is being translated into more than twenty languages, and adapted into a young adult book, and an HBO film produced by Oprah Winfrey and Alan Ball. Skloot lives in Chicago but regularly abandons city life to write in the hills of West Virginia, where she tends to find stray animals and bring them home. She travels extensively to speak about her book. For more information, visit RebeccaSkloot.com, where you will find book special features, including photos and videos, as well as her book tour schedule, and links to follow her and The Immortal Life on Twitter and Facebook.

Zen & The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

You can buy the 40th anniversary edition of 

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance........Here

The blurb...

 A philosophical odyssey into life's fundamental questions during an unforgettable summer motorcycle trip, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance transformed a generation and continues to inspire millions

One of the most influential books written in the past half-century, Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a powerful examination of how we live and a breathtaking meditation on how to live better. Following a father and his young son on a summer motorcycle trip across America's Northwest, it is a story of love, fear, growth, discovery and acceptance. Both personal and philosophical, it is a compelling study of relationships, values, and eventually, enlightenment – resonant with the confusions and wonders of existence.
Acclaimed as one of the most exciting books in the history of American letters, this modern epic became an instant bestseller upon publication in 1974.

‘The book is inspired, original…the analogies with Moby-Dick are patent’ New Yorker
‘Mr Pirsig has written a work of great, perhaps urgent, importance... Read this book’ Observer

My Review..

Only 47 years late to the party but Wow! where to begin with this...

Firstly it is three threads in one book

1. It is a travelogue of a man and his 12-year old son travelling from Minnesota to San Francisco via motorbike in the 60s.
2. It is story of a schizophrenic (the father) who has been purged of his alter ego (Phadreus a PhD philosophy student, who went insane contemplating the concept of Quality) by electro-shock treatment in a mental institution. The man is now free but his alter ego  gradually begins to enter his conscience again as the motorcycle journey progresses.
3. Most importantly it is a philosophical paper on our place in the grand scheme of things, how we fit into the universe and how the universe fits into us. He calls it an investigation into Quality. However: the term quality can be misleading. I think if you substitute the word Quality for Tao (Or as Douglas Adams would call it in The Hitch-hikers guide to the Galaxy, Life, the Universe and Everything) you get a much better understanding of what he is driving at.

While the first two themes are interesting in and of themselves, their main role is to serve as a break from the heavy lifting of reading deeply abstract, philosophical tracts. These tracts are indeed heavy going. I often found myself re-reading them several times just to gain a basic understanding of them, but it is worth it.

While it is not the most entertaining book that I have ever read it is probably the most fascinating. Often the question is asked "has any book changed your life?" My head is buzzing with this book. I think in years to come, for me, this will be that book. The trouble is unless you have read (and mentally digested) it is hard to explain why. It melds Western thinking with Eastern thinking. The issue of "Quality" is to big to be approached head on, it has to be approached by allegories. The main allegory being that the system of motorcycle maintenance is an allegory for life itself and as such this book is not really about motor cycles, its about the human experience and how to live our best lives, which in turn will bring a pleasant aesthetic and calmness to the world around us. 

The book builds theory on theory showing us that the motor cycle (life) is not separate from us, we are not subject and object but are intrinsically linked in a sort of constant feedback loop with everything. If we carry the proper maintenance (develop a zen approach) on the motorbike (life) in a thoughtful and precise manner we will get a fulfilment that is often sadly lacking in today's world. The words sound very clumsy as I'm writing them, I'm afraid I'm not explaining concepts well. Read the book, Persig does it beautifully, often with a lovely, lyrical style.

This edition (40th Anniversary) contained some interesting extras

• A series of fascinating letters between the author and publisher over several years. The book was famously turned down 121 times. The publisher eventually published not for profit (he thought it probable that there would be none) but because he thought it was his duty to try bring these writings to the attention of the world, which begs the question would a book like this published today.
• An afterword by the author (now deceased) that is just heartbreaking.
• Questions for discussion.

The book dissects how we live our lives and how we can live better. Dont get me wrong, this is a Marmite book (For non Brits, that means that you will either love it or hate it. There is no middle ground.) And the book has to find you at the right time of your life. I have no doubt that if I read this at 20 years of age, I would have said that he is a bit pretentious and is going to disappear up his own backside, but as you get older you become more mellow and start to think about Life, the Universe and Everything and about Quality.

Bottom line.. An amazing revelatory book

Selected Quotes...

"We're in such a hurry most of the time, we never get much chance to talk.The result is a kind of endless day to day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry it's all gone"

"What's wrong with technology is that its not connected in any real way with the matters of the spirit and the heart."

"Mental reflection is so much more interesting than TV it's a shame more people don't switch over to it. They probably think what they hear is unimportant but it never is"

"Or if he takes whatever dull job he is stuck with - and they are all, sooner or later, dull- and just to keep himself amused starts to look for options of Quality and secretly pursues the options, just for their own sake, thus making art out of what he is doing, he's likely to discover that he becomes a much more interesting person and much less of an object to the people around him because his Quality decisions change him too."

"The place to improve the world is first in ones's own heart and head and hands, and the work outward from there. Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle. I think what I have to say has more lasting value."

“When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called a Religion.”

“The only Zen you find on tops of mountains is the Zen you bring there.”

About the author...

Robert M. Pirsig was the renowned author of the bestseller, ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” a popular cult classic of the present century. As a child, he believed that there was a theory that could explain the different singularities of life and he hoped that science would be the solution to his queries and enlighten him. Contrary to his conviction, he arrived at a number of hypotheses for many given phenomenon while he was doing laboratory work at the University of Minnesota. This resulted in the deterioration of his academic performance and his subsequent dismissal from the university. He advocated the theory of ‘Metaphysics of Quality’ and through his works he explained the impact of “quality” and “good” over reality. His theory is the culmination of Western and Oriental philosophy through which he offered solutions to the crises of values in the western civilization. He also authored another famous book ‘Lila: An Inquiry into Morals’, which was nominated for the Pulitzer.