Lustrum by Robert Harris
Hutchinson, £18.99
Robert Harris well deserves his huge fan club. But I suspect I am one of the last of its members to read Lustrum. Those who got there before me will not need to be told that his latest novel is a magnificent, sweeping, gripping political drama and its placing in ancient Rome incidental to the universal truths it reveals about the grubby lust for power. Anglicise the Roman names and the reader might be in Westminster witnessing the latest machinations against Gordon Brown. The only real difference is that the Prime Minister faces metaphorical rather than actual crucifixion if those plotting against him should ever succeed.
Mr Harris needs no praise from me for his near-perfect craftsmanship. What he might need to do, though, is have a word with his publishers. A long-promised review copy never arrived so his book instead went to the top of my Christmas present list. It means that from Hutchinson’s commercial point of view this critique is a little late. But from mine it was worth the wait.
The continuing story of the ups and downs of the statesman Cicero is once again told through the pen of his secretary, Tiro; a real figure who invented shorthand for the purpose. We owe him the ampersand & also the abbreviations nb, ie, eg and etc. The Cicero of this trilogy’s first volume, Imperium, bore all the hallmarks of Tony Blair. Both men were barristers and both about the same age when they came to power. But the Cicero of Lustrum – it means a sacrifice offered every five years – has morphed into Harris’s best friend, Peter Mandelson, with all the cleverness, guile, and ruthlessness we have come to expect of the Business Secretary. Lustrum is even dedicated to him should we need to be reminded who Cicero is meant to represent.
As Lustrum is closely based on history
one must be wary of making too many comparisons with modern British politics. But it is more than a coincidence that Cicero’s downfall, like Mandelson’s, begins with a questionable loan to buy a home he could not otherwise afford. Harris even enjoys an in-joke at his friend’s expense, which he puts into Tiro’s mouth. “Cicero was not the first politician, and I am sure he will not be the last, to covet a house beyond his means,” he writes.
And Cicero’s response to Tiro’s concerns about what the voters will think when they discover he has managed to collar a property at a quarter of its true value is pure Mandelson. “For gods’ sake, will you stop lecturing me about how I am to live?” explodes Cicero/Mandelson. “Haven’t I earned the right to some luxury at long last? Half of this town would be nothing but charred brick and ashes if it weren’t for me.”
The way politicians casually discard even the most intimate of personal relationships which have become obstacles to their careers is as ageless as politics itself. Julius Caesar does not hesitate to dump his wife when it is expedient to do so – just as Robin Cook instantly left Mrs Cook when he had to choose between his wife and his mistress to remain Foreign Secretary.
There are comic similarities between the Roman Senate of Cicero’s consulship in 63BC and the House of Commons today. Then, as now, Private Members’ Bills inconvenient to the government are talked out, and MPs obsessed with procedural points will recognise themselves in the tedious senator Cato if they are self-aware enough to do so.
For a tribune of the people in those days getting the politics wrong meant death rather than deselection. Other than that, we do not seem to have progressed much. It is not necessary to have already read Imperium to enjoy this book, but I still recommend taking them in that order. And although you do not have to be a political anorak to be mesmerised by them, a lively interest in the body politic helps. Lustrum ends with Cicero heading off into exile, stripped of his wealth and political influence, outwitted, outsmarted and outgunned by his arch rival Caesar, his career seemingly finished. Just like Peter Mandelson. We know from history he is resurrected to even greater glory on his surprise return. Just like Peter Mandelson. So the assassination of Caesar is still to come, as are the tussles with Mark Antony and the brilliant, fiery speeches Cicero was to call his Philippics.
All this will be the subject of the next – and final – volume. I hope very much that Robert Harris is busy writing it now. And I hope also that his publishers will next time remember me once he has completed it.
Nigel Nelson
