The cover artwork for Robert Harris’s Agrippa, published by Hutchinson Heinemann
“I CAN’T stand it when novelists read from their own books,” deadpans Robert Harris before reading to a full house in the lecture theatre at Tempest Anderson Hall, Yorkshire Museum, York Museum Gardens.
The author, who isone of the most successful and popular novelists of our time, was in town to promote his latest page-turner, Agrippa, at an event organised by Waterstones, York.
The comment extracted laughter from the audience, who were mostly white, middle-class and over 50. Harris is a likeable presence. An ex-journalist, he has a pithy and appealing way of communicating. He can get to the point and has a winning way with stories.
His books have been translated into 40 languages and converted to numerous films and television adaptations. But he’s also enviably committed. He writes seven days a week, turning out a focused 800 words a day, and has an enormous capacity for memory and research. His writing study is filled with hundreds of books.
Harris’ 17 historical novels have roamed from ancient Rome to Nazi Germany. Typically, they focus on a moment of crisis: Precipice dealt with the start of the First World War. Pompeii focused on the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79.
They also tend to dwell in the corridors of influence, whether it is Whitehall or Rome’s Senate. “Power fascinates me,” says Harris.
The stories invariably are the preserve of men. In Conclave, the Papacy struggled to pick its next leader. In Act Of Oblivion, men hunt other men who signed the death warrant of King Charles I.
Some of Harris’s heroes share several similarities with their author: introverted, disciplined, methodical and with a strong moral backbone. In Agrippa, however, he writes in the voice of somebody less given to compromise. The man of the book’s title was one of Rome’s thugs, an enforcer for Octavius. Together, they overcame numerous obstacles.
The key to the novel, Harris feels, was getting the voice right. “Agrippa must have been a tough son of a bitch…he looks like a nightclub bouncer,” he says. (Anyone interested can soon find the bust of Agrippa’s face from 25BC on the web. He does, indeed, look like an uncompromising character.)
The Roman general could be ruthless, explains Harris: “He put down a rebellion in Spain with particular severity.” Yet Harris also notes his subject’s more sophisticated side. Agrippa was the man behind some of Rome’s aquaducts, including the one in the bay of Naples.
“Agrippa was a man of destruction and warfare, but then there’s all this creation,” says Harris. Unlike Cicero, whose speeches were recorded, there are hardly any surviving documents relating to Agrippa, just lots of dates and secondary sources.
This, Harris says, was great news. “For a historical novelist, this is fantastic…an empty slate to write on.”
Octavius was only 18 when he partnered with Agrippa, who was one year older. “Nobody would have given them a chance…they became rulers of the world,” says Harris, who retains objectivity about his characters. “Octavius was not a pleasant person. He is said to have gouged out the eyes of people. He was also a hypocrite. He had a lot of affairs with wives of his soldiers, at the same time he brought in strict moral laws about adultery.”
Harris has entered this world before. His highly successful Cicero trilogy explored the world of Ancient Rome with a focus on the machinations of power. The leaders were power-mad thugs. The books were not that far away from The Sopranos. Both have an Italian influence, if not the same weapons. Caesar, who appears in the new novel, was, says Harris “sinister and glamorous at the same time”.
Harris mentions powerful women and there’s a brief allusion to Sarah Netanyahu and the “demonic energy behind the scenes”. He seems to regret this comment. Naturally, I scribble it down.
The new book comes at a time when strong-arm politics are in force. Might is right. Agrippa,like Donald Trump, does what he wants, knowing he can rely on strongman tactics. Harris speaks about this, laughing a little at Trump’s recent enjoyment of gladiators on the White House lawn.
The novelist can sometimes be lacerating. When David Cameron’s autobiography came out in September 2019, Harris wrote a scathing review in The Sunday Times, lamenting Cameron’s arrogance and the tragedy-farce of Brexit. “It would be better,” he wrote, ‘if Cameron hadn’t been born.”
From the safety of his home in the Home Counties, Harris conjurs up whole worlds. In York, he spoke with relish about writing battle scenes. “When the blood is being spilled and you’re at a desk in Berkshire, it’s the best place to be.” His humour is enjoyable – the audience laughs several times.
Robert Harris did not come from grand origins. Born in 1957, he grew up on a council estate in Nottingham. It seems he was precocious. At the age of six wrote an essay entitled “Why me and my Dad don’t like Sir Alec Douglas-Home”. (Harris’s father was very engaged in politics, heckling Douglas-Home when the politician visited Nottingham market square.)
At school Harris wrote plays, getting his friends to act in performances, and edited the school magazine. He later went to Cambridge, the first person of his family to attend university, and was elected president of the Cambridge Union. His time there lent him confidence; he became the editor ofVarsity, the Cambridge student newspaper.
After Cambridge, he worked in journalism, contributing to Panorama, Newsnight, The Sunday Times and Observer between 1978 and 1992. His television work led to a close friendship with Jeremy Paxman. He wrote several non-fiction books, including Good And Faithful Servant, a profile of Margaret Thatcher’s press secretary, Bernard Ingham. Selling Hitler was about the fake Hitler diaries that caused a sensation in the early 1980s.
When he sat down in 1989 to write the opening lines of Fatherland, his first novel, he found the moment exhilarating. “I had to go and lie down,” he tells the York audience, who chuckle with amusement.
The contrast between non-fiction and fiction was intoxicating. “It was the difference between riding a bicycle and flying a helicopter,” he says. Fatherland imagined a world in which Germany triumphed in the Second World War. The novel was so appealing to publishers that a bidding war ensued. The advance was sizeable and led to Harris acquiring anice place in Berkshire that has sometimes been called sometimes been called “The House That Hitler Built”. The house is very grand and, according to one interviewer “…triggers little stabs of envy in the hearts of all the journalists who go and interview Harris”.
Some of his books emerge after a long time. Precipice, about the relationship between Prime Minister Asquith and Venetia, was published in 2024, four decades after Harris first read a book about their clandestine correspondence. The Ghost took 15 years to come to fruition. With Agrippa, there was also a sense of waiting. “I wanted to write about Agrippa for a long time,”says the author.
At the end of the reading and Q and A, he poses for photographs with fans. One senses he is a remarkable person, totally committed to his craft as a writer who entertains. I’ve read 11 of his books. They are always enjoyable, even if one or two had a dip in quality (The Second Sleep was not so hot, even if the idea was interesting). But that laser-like focus: 800 words a day. That’s really something.
Agrippa by Robert Harris is out now, published by Hutchinson Heinemann.
MILES Salter is a writer and musician based in York. He writes regularly for York Calling. His book about The Pretenders, A Dangerous Band, will be published on November 1. He fronts the band Miles and The Chain Gang.
Review by Miles Salter
