The life and times of ancient Rome. Or at least the life and times of a few rich and powerful Romans in 63-58 BC. (Did you know the Romans counted backwards?). Tiro - who invented shorthand - is secretary to Cicero. In part one we follow both through Cicero's year as Consul (boss of Rome before t...
In Conspirata Robert Harris has again written a novel of classical Rome that is rich with characters, atmosphere, historical detail, and plot. The book focuses on Cicero’s attempts to preserve the authority of the Roman Senate, and the Republic, against Caesar’s dictatorial machinations that fle...
If so, then I should qualify my words just a little with a warning. Ghostwriting I PULLED UP ONTO the verge and turned off the engine. Looking around at the dense and dripping woodland, I felt a profound sense of disappointment. I wasn’t sure exactly what I’d been expectin...
A Lexicon of Cryptography (“Most Secret”, Bletchley Park, 1943) LATER, IT WOULD transpire that Bletchley Park knew almost everything there was to know about U-653. They knew she was a Type VIIc—220 feet long, 20 feet wide, with a submerged displacement of 871 tons and a surface range of 6,500 mil...
Berlin-Gotenland, Bülow-Strasse, Nollendorf-Platz, Wittenberg- Platz, Nürnberger-Platz, Hohenzollern-Platz—the stations succeed one another like pearls on a string. The carriages that work this line are prewar. Red cars for smokers, yellow for nonsmokers. Hard wooden seats...
The palatial building in which he had invested so much of his wealth and prestige had been entirely pulled down; nine tenths of the huge plot was weeds and rubble; it was barely possible to discern the original layout of the walls through the tangled overgrowth. Cicero stooped to pick up one of t...
You mean a Holiday Inn?' 'Fluke, Fluke -' 'Listen, if we try to stay the night here, we'll end up staying the winter.' 'Oh, come on, man, they have to send a snow plough, don't they? Surely? At some point?' 'At some point?' repeated Kelso. He shook his head. And there would have been another row ...
The cover story is that they are four friends on a hiking holiday in the Baselbiet. Henry’s jacket is of an unfortunate broad-check design; his felt hat sprouts a feather. He is red-faced and grumpy in the heat. It makes one wonder why he has schemed so hard to join the party. &...
The first,hora prima, began at sunrise. The last,hora duodecima, ended at sunset.The night was divided into eight watches—Vespera, Prima fax, Concubia,andIntempesta before midnight;Inclinatio, Gallicinium, Conticinium, andDiluculum after it.The days of the week were Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, ...
Ghostwriting IT LOOKED TO BE about ten miles away, on the northwestern shore of the Vineyard. Lambert’s Cove: that was it. There was something beguiling about the names of the locations all around it: Blackwater Brook, Uncle Seth’s Pond, Indian Hill, Old Herring Creek Road...
For thirty-six years I was the confidential secretary of the Roman statesman Cicero. At first this was exciting, then astonishing, then arduous, and finally extremely dangerous. During those years I believe he spent more hours with me than with any other person, including his own family. I witnes...
A man who possessed no trace of such instincts would be an unnatural monster. CHARLES DARWIN, The Descent of Man (1871) HOFFMANN’S NON-EXISTENT PUBLIC profile had not been achieved without effort. One day, quite early in the history of Hoffmann Investment Tec...