The October Horse - Tapa dura

Following Morgan's Run and Caesar comes a huge new historical novel which opens in 48 BC with Caesar at the height of his powers, and Labienus bringing the news of Pompey the Great's defeat by Caesar (after crossing the Rubicon at Pharsalus) to Cato and Cicero. It ends in 42 BC with the death of Brutus. At the beginning of the tale, Caesar is happily married yet at the same time the lover of Cleopatra, the ruler of Egypt. He is conscious of his great power, but respects the republic and has no intention of being worshipped as a god. The conspiracy to assassinate him was led by Brutus and Cassius, and he died on the Ides of March, 44 BC. It is a marvellous, sweeping story, which brings the period vividly alive, and retells a vital period in world history in a splendidly accessible way.

With the possible exception of the crucifixion of Christ no moment of history is more universally familiar and more often depicted than the assassination of Julius Caesar. Caesar is in the prime of his life and the height of his powers as the novel opens. A man of contradictions, Caesar is happily married yet at the same time the lover of the enigmatic and subtle Egyptian ruler, Cleopatra. He is at once a great general who commands the instinctive loyalty of Rome's legions, and a man who wishes to bring to an end Rome's endless civil and external wars, a man not only conscious of his own power, and contemptuous of lesser men, but respectful of the republic, and determined not to be worshipped as a living god or crowned as an emperor, a man whose very greatness attracts envy and jealousy to a dangerous degree. With her extraordinary knowledge of Roman history, Colleen McCullough brings Caesar to life as nobody has ever done before, and surrounds him with an enormous and vivid cast of historical characters, portrayed here not as literary figures, but as real, living people, trying to control and master enormous political events and survive.