Nero

Conn Iggulden

PUBLICATION DATE: 23 MAY 2024 | PENGUIN MICHAEL JOSEPH | HARDBACK | £22.00

On the night Agrippina gives birth to her son, a man is strangled, his body thrown to the mob, and his family, friends, and allies slaughtered. Emperor Tiberius has spoken – dispatching Sejanus, his prefect who treacherously presumed to inherit all Rome. This is Roman justice.

It is an ill-omened start to Agrippina’s son’s life. But this new mother is granddaughter of Augustus. Having seen her brothers exiled then executed by Tiberius, she knows the empire is no place for faint hearts. Even emperors dare not put their trust in underlings or guards. Only the bold, daring and merciless survive.

But Tiberius – old, paranoid, dying – is not long for this world. Before he dies, he makes Agrippina’s surviving sibling Caligula his heir, drawing her deep into the forum’s murderous conspiracies. Between the rages of her drunken charioteer husband and the mad whims of her brother, she must somehow protect her newborn son.

But Tiberius – old, paranoid, dying – is not long for this world. Before he dies, he makes Agrippina’s surviving sibling Caligula his heir, drawing her deep into the forum’s murderous conspiracies. Between the rages of her drunken charioteer husband and the mad whims of her brother, she must somehow protect her newborn son.

Conn Iggulden is one of the most successful authors of historical fiction writing today.

A former English teacher and a passionate advocate for the power of stories, Conn

has written bestselling series on Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan and the Wars of the

Roses, as well as two stand-alone novels: Dunstan, set in the red-blooded world of

tenth-century England, and The Falcon of Sparta, in which he returned to the Ancient

World. Both instalments of his Athenian series, The Gates of Athens and Protector,

and his recent Golden Age series, Lion and Empire, are Sunday Times bestsellers. He

has been described as ‘one of our finest historical novelists’ by the Daily Express.