By the age of 30 Robert Harris had already achieved what most of us can only dream of. Despite hailing from a Nottingham council estate he got into Cambridge to study English Literature, moved swiftly through the ranks of the BBC to work on Panorama and Newsnight and in 1987 became political editor of The Observer, so you would be forgiven for thinking that his ambitions at this point had been realised. But that was before he became one of the most famous authors on the planet.

His books are now so successful that they are almost automatically made straight into films. Ghost Writer is currently out and who can forget Enigma or Fatherland? So will An Officer and A Spy be next?

“Yes I’m writing the screenplay at the moment,” he smiles, “as well as part three of the Cicero trilogy.” Never long between books, Robert Harris gets “angtsy” if he leaves it too long and admits to being fairly preoccupied most of the time. “No I can’t turn my brain off and don’t like not having a book on the go,” he admitted.

Appearing at the upcoming Wantage (not just) Betjeman Literary Festival gives us the excuse to quiz this fascinating man further. So let’s go back, right to the beginning, before the bright lights of Hollywood beckoned, when his eight bestsellers were still a twinkle in his eye.

“I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was eight years old when I would write precocious articles in imaginary newspapers. It’s always been what interested me, so it was a natural step to go into journalism, which is where my heart and soul remains,” he says.

“Journalism has informed what I write and my working methods. I like to have a deadline, I need the adrenaline.”

And the subjects he tackles?

“I think so to some extent. In An Officer and A Spy, the Dreyfus affair was the biggest whistle-blowing scandal until Watergate. So it’s very much a novel about journalists and the press.” So what comes first. . . . the story or the writing? “It’s the writing that gets me going, the process of telling the story, because I want to get into the characters and make them credible, that’s the exciting bit.”

And yet the research involved is immense.

“I do sigh before I sit down and do the research, because it’s just a matter of selection,” he agreed.

An enormous responsibility then?

“There is a degree of responsibility in telling the story because complete events don’t turn into stories easily.”

You can almost hear the movie directors rubbing their hands in glee when Robert Harris finishes a novel. So does he bear the cinematic potential in mind when writing now?

“I don’t write for anyone else, I write for me. But the reaction is to fight against screenwriting because it’s better to have a 150,000 quarry of words to mine for a two hour movie than a screenplay,” he said, and then paused.

“And yet An Officer and A Spy is a natural drama — it’s got all the elements — a court case, imprisonment, Devil’s Island, it has an incredibly visual element to it already.

“But that’s why I have never drawn on my own experiences or childhood in my novels because I would have run out of stories by now. Instead I have got 2,000 years to range across.”

If that sounds like a long time, Harris’s fourth novel was Pompeii, and its success meant Harris could give up the day job permanently. So did he miss the cut and thrust of the newsroom?

“Yes I did miss journalism and went back to it several times over the next ten years writing columns in The Sunday Times and Daily Telegraph.”

So when did he realise he was on to something with this writing business? “I wrote a third of Fatherland and it went to auction in New York where they were bidding for it before I had even finished it. That’s when I realised this was going to turn into something and it changed my life because I got to do what I’ve always liked doing — telling stories.”

That he manages to work at all is nothing short of a miracle considering he writes from his Berkshire home which he shares with his wife and four children.

“I live in an old vicarage and the Victorians had big solid doors,” he told me, smiling.

“Besides, the kids have grown up with me doing this so have learned to leave me alone. And I tend to write early in the day, often at 5.30am in the summer and finish at lunchtime, so I rarely miss bathtime and it’s been a privilege to do that. As a result I like to think I have a very easy relationship with my children.”

And yet writers are famous for being there in body but not in mind: “When you are totally immersed in a book then it’s inevitable it takes over a large part of your brain and that you are engaged with that story, but at the same time you have to try to forget it because your mind needs to refresh itself, so I’m not too bad. I don’t do any signings or anything when I’m writing, because it’s too disruptive but otherwise it’s great to get out there and meet people.”

As you can do at the Wantage (not just) Betjeman Literary Festival next week, a coup for them one would imagine? “You make it sound like two men and a dog,” he laughed, “but I don’t live far from Wantage and have lots of friends around there so thought it a perfectly nice way to spend a Tuesday evening — a small festival where you can meet your readers and interact. I’m looking forward to it.”

 

Robert Harris at the Wantage (not just) Betjeman
Literary Festival
Shush, Newbury Street, Wantage
Tuesday, October 22, at 7.30pm
The festival runs from Saturday,
October 19, until Sunday, October 27
Visit www.wantagebetjeman.com