Robert Harris

Bestselling author Robert Harris returns to Ely for his new thrilling novel, Precipice.

It is summer, 1914. The world is on the brink of catastrophe.

In London, 26-year-old Venetia Stanley - aristocratic, clever, bored, reckless - is having a love affair with the Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith, a man more than twice her age. He writes to her obsessively, sharing the most sensitive matters of state.

As Asquith reluctantly leads the country into war with Germany, a young intelligence officer is assigned to investigate a leak of top secret documents - and suddenly what was a sexual intrigue becomes a matter of national security that will alter the course of political history.

Precipice seamlessly weaves together fact and fiction, in a world full of scandal and espionage.

Robert Harris is the author of fifteen bestselling novels: the Cicero Trilogy - Imperium, Lustrum and Dictator- Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompeii, The Ghost, The Fear Index, An Officer and a Spy, which won four prizes including the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, Conclave, Munich, The Second Sleep, V2 and Act of Oblivion. His work has been translated into forty languages and nine of his books have been adapted for cinema and television. He lives in West Berkshire with his wife, Gill Hornby.