Sceptre, 1999, 248p

This comes with an encomium from Gore Vidal on the front cover, ‘Master of the long ago historical novel.’ Since Vidal’s own Roman excursion Julian was no petty achievement this is high praise.

The book is essentially the reminiscences of Scaurus, an offshoot of ancient Roman aristocracy; in his youth an intimate of Vespasian’s son Titus and friend of Titus’s brother Domitian – all of whom were to become Emperor – as well as an admirer (and, much later, lover) of their sister Domatilla.

Written as a series of letters to Tacitus in reply to requests from that historian to provide background for his endeavours, interspersed with the narrator’s own reflections on his early life, it provides a close-up view of the turbulent Year of the Four Emperors that followed the death of Nero. Accordingly, the focus is not quite as sharp as it was in some of Massie’s other Roman novels; events are sometimes related at a distance. Hence, while Nero’s Heirs is always readable, there are some passages which read more like history than the dramatisation usual in a fictional narrative.

I suppose they are only to be expected in a work set in this period but the asides on early Christianity struck a wrong note for me. I would have thought that someone of Scaurus’s upbringing would most likely have paid scant attention to the doings and beliefs of a then minor, not to mention proscribed, religious sect whose adherents were mainly slaves. (No matter how beautiful his slave was.)

Massie is certainly in control of his subject matter, though, and his knowledge of the times shines through.

The novel concentrates more on Scaurus’s relationship with Domitian than either Titus or Vespasian, as he is present in Rome, with Scaurus, at the appropriate time while the others are busy quelling the Jewish rebellion in Judæa. The traits which would come to the fore when Domitian succeeded to the imperial purple are well foreshadowed by Massie, a study in the jealousy of a younger son for an older, apparently more favoured, brother.

A finely written example of the novelist’s art, Nero’s Heirs is also a painless way of immersing yourself in the history of the early Roman Empire.

The Bodley Head, 1984

Dallas Graham, a former writer with one novel long behind him, now runs an antique shop. He has a more successful and still sexy wife who has affairs from time to time and who reacquaints him with Candida, a woman he knew years before. Dallas writes about this past, relating the tangled circumstances of Candida’s involvement in a high profile murder, as if his former self was a character in a novel and he has little connection to him. These passages are interspersed with others set in the contemporaneous world in which Dallas is writing.

In the 60s – there is a reference to what can only be the Torrey Canyon – Dallas falls into the orbit of a well-connected businessman and charismatic womaniser called Fraser Donnelly who is a flouter of conventions of all sorts, with thuggish tendencies. Donnelly has a coterie of hangers-on who appear to varying degrees mesmerised by him. Candida is a friend of Fraser’s much put upon wife Linda and wishes to protect or even free her from his influence.

Dallas interacts with a few of these characters – who curiously spend a lot of time talking about the drawbacks of being Scottish and the merits or otherwise of independence. (Is this a reflection of the fact that the novel was published in Thatcher’s time, before devolution? It does not seem a necessary part of Dallas’s story, except as a philosophical illustration of his (and most Scots?) inability to escape his upbringing.)

Things come to a head on a sojourn to Crete where Donnelly behaves in a way which upsets the local inhabitants and takes coarse delight in informing Candida that he has subsequently buggered Linda.

This incident seems less than startling nowadays – Bridget Jones appeared to accept the act with equanimity in the film. But it is supposed to have occurred in the 60s and attitudes were different then. Candida and Dallas are suitably revulsed.

Partly as a consequence, Dallas begins to spiral loose from Donnelly’s orbit and, one night in winter, after a drinking session, is beaten up by Donnelly who apparently feels scorned. Due to Donnelly’s belligerence, Candida senses Lorna is in danger and asks Dallas to fetch the police, but he is caught drunk-driving and they ignore him. That same night Donnelly is murdered, the trigger being his attempted rape of his latest hanger-on, Caroline. Candida attempts to cover up the crime but is doomed to failure.

The trial which follows fails to bear out Dallas’s perception of the truth of what happened. There is a strange parallel here with The Fanatic which also featured a trial whose outcome was a foregone conclusion.

There is a coda set in the 80s present where Dallas is revealed still to drift through his life.

One Night In Winter was fine while I was reading it and the prose is elegant and readable enough but in the end, beyond Candida’s self sacrifice, it all seemed rather inconsequential.
Perhaps it had more resonance in the 1980s.