Robert harris author biography essay
Harris, Robert 1957- (Robert Dennis Harris)
PERSONAL:
Born March 7, 1957, enclose Nottingham, England; son of Dennis Harris (a printer) and Audrey Harris; married Gillian Hornby (a journalist), 1988; children: Holly Miranda, Charlie Robert Nicholas, Matilda Spirit, Samuel Orlando Hornby.
Education: Selwyn College, Cambridge, B.A. (with honors), 1978. Politics: "Supporter of primacy British Labour Party." Hobbies most recent other interests: Reading history, rambling, fishing, listening to music.
ADDRESSES:
Home—Berkshire, England. Office—The Old Vicarage, Kintbury, County R915 OTR, England.
Agent—PFD, Drury House, 34-43 Russell St., Writer WC2B 5HA, England.
CAREER:
Writer. British Medium Corporation (BBC-TV), London, England, supporter and film director for Tonight, Nationwide, and Panorama, 1978-81, journo for Newsnight, 1981-85, and cargo space Panorama, 1985-87; Observer, London, England, political editor, 1987-89; Thames Tube, London, England, political reporter pay money for This Week, 1988-89; Sunday Times, London, England, political columnist, 1989-92.
AWARDS, HONORS:
Columnist of the Year, Island Press Awards, 2003.
WRITINGS:
(With Jeremy Paxman) A Higher Form of Killing: The Secret Story of Guff and Germ Warfare, Chatto & Windus (London, England), 1982, available as A Higher Form extent Killing: The Secret Story hook Chemical and Biological Warfare, Stack bank & Wang (New York, NY), 1982, reprinted under original christen, Random House (New York, NY), 2002.
Gotcha!
The Media, the Control, and the Falklands Crisis, Faber & Faber (London, England), 1983.
The Making of Neil Kinnock, Faber & Faber (London, England), 1984.
Selling Hitler, Pantheon (New York, NY), 1986.
Good and Faithful Servant: Depiction Unauthorized Biography of Bernard Ingham, Faber & Faber (London, England), 1990.
NOVELS
Fatherland, Random House (New Dynasty, NY), 1992.
Enigma, Random House (New York, NY), 1995.
Archangel, Hutchinson (London, England), 1998, Jove Books (New York, NY), 2000.
Pompeii, Random Residence (New York, NY), 2003.
Imperium, Psychologist & Schuster (New York, NY), 2006.
The Ghost, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2007.
Harris's occupation has been translated into distinct languages.
ADAPTATIONS:
Fatherland was adapted as precise TV movie for Home Receptacle Office (HBO).
Archangel has anachronistic adapted for audio cassette. Enigma was adapted as a crust in 2001.
SIDELIGHTS:
Robert Harris had unavoidable several books of nonfiction at hand the 1980s before the change of his popular 1992 original Fatherland. Constructed around the key that Adolf Hitler led honourableness Nazis to victory in Imitation War II, with Germany defeating both Great Britain and dignity Soviet Union and fighting prestige United States to an anxious deadlock, Fatherland became a chief seller, selling three million copies worldwide.
Several of Harris's past nonfiction works, such as A Higher Form of Killing: Depiction Secret Story of Chemical meticulous Biological Warfare and Gotcha! Depiction Media, the Government, and nobility Falklands Crisis, also deal extinct war and its repercussions. Dilemma Selling Hitler Harris details authority 1983 hoax in which efficient counterfeiter claimed to have unconcealed the diaries of the shut up Nazi leader.
A true account touch on the Hitler diary hoax, Selling Hitler reveals the extent be a consequence which greed influenced the making known industry to overlook the trustworthiness of the (supposedly) newly observed diaries in favor of their market-ability.
"One merit of Parliamentarian Harris's thorough and mordantly comical account of the diaries offence in Selling Hitler is wind he lets no one practical joker the hook," commented New Dynasty Times Book Review critic Crook Markham. The diaries were primarily obtained by a reporter shadow the German magazine Stern; according to Jonathan Alter in Newsweek, "Executives at Stern's parent run, Gruner and Jahr, smelled mode.
Not wanting to see picture bubble burst, Stern subjected picture papers to only the domineering cursory handwriting examination." Markham celebrated in the New York Ancient Book Review that Harris support "an unsettling portrait of goodness press baron, Rupert Murdoch, who aggressively bought up rights confess the diaries for his corp … and then nonchalantly laidoff their fraudulence with an dejectedly memorable one-liner: ‘After all, phenomenon are in the entertainment business.’" New Statesman reviewer Paul Hallam wrote that Harris tells that "sick saga … with skilfulness and wit."
The first of Harris's novels, Fatherland, unfolds in movie style.
The setting is 1964, on the eve of mammoth important visit by the director of the United States, Patriarch P. Kennedy, to the Germanic fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, in smashing Berlin that is now description site of the grandiose Worthy Hall (built to the specifications of Nazi architect Albert Architect, the building can accommodate 180,000 people).
The Allies have left out World War II, the wartime British prime minister, Winston Statesman, is in exile in Canada, and Germany now controls nomadic of Europe and a skilled part of the Soviet Unification. Against this background a Germanic police detective, Xavier March, investigates the murder of a Authoritarian party official and in depiction course of his probe unearths a terrible secret with general implications.
Pursued by the Gestapo, March attempts to publicize uncut crime of immeasurable dimensions—the businesslike murder of millions of Denizen Jews, whom the world believes to have been nonviolently move to the East. "March's teaching jeopardize the crowning achievement be frightened of Hitler's three decades in office: world peace," commented Mark Pianist in the Los Angeles Days Book Review. Coming at keen time when the American superintendent is making overtures to annoyed the cold war with Frg, "revelations of a Holocaust would make appeasement impossible," Horowitz explained.
New York Times Book Review essayist Newgate Callendar wrote that Fatherland is an "absorbing, expertly certain novel….
[It] is a abrasive book. But what concerns integrity author is the indestructibility clever the human spirit, as exemplified by Xavier March." In Time, John Skow stated that Harris's "brooding, brown-and-black setting of nifty victorious Nazi regime is arguable and troubling, the stuff take in long nights of little sleep." And in the Los Angeles Times Book Review Horowitz remarked that "Fatherland works fine brand a sly and scary page-turner."
Harris followed Fatherland with his quickly novel, Enigma. Like its precursor, Enigma is a World Enmity II thriller, this time inception in a secret code-breaking post in England.
At the zenith of the war, brilliant-but-inexperienced pollster Thomas Jericho has managed disregard crack a Nazi code nicknamed Shark—but the marathon effort has led to his nervous crackup. Before his recovery is sweet, however, Jericho is called sayso to work on an level tougher Nazi code: Enigma, which is generated on new four-rotor encrypting machines.
With a plurality of American warships about command somebody to lock horns with German U-boats, it is vital that leadership code be cracked in again and again to ensure an Allied shake-up. Complications further ensue when Hamlet suspects his new love, Claire Romilly, of being a spy.
"The second novel is always description most difficult, especially after undiluted big hit," wrote Clive Ponting in New Statesman & Society. The critic acknowledged Harris's soph effort as an "ultimately … formulaic thriller whose location cannot disguise its rather ordinary plot," though Ponting added that prestige author does provide "a moderately good pace." John Skow in Time found more to like creepycrawly Enigma, saying that the negligible of Harris's efforts to depict genius are "worthy and defensible, if not luminous." And grasp a Publishers Weekly contributor, influence novel is "a rare bowl of cerebral and visceral thrills that features risky exploits complementing the exhilarating challenge [of] explication daunting puzzles within puzzles." Spur-of-the-moment from being an international defeat seller, Enigma was the theme of a BBC documentary feasible the making of a thriller.
The author is "at his best," wrote Skow, in his tertiary novel, Archangel. In the "what-if" tradition of Fatherland, Archangel takes on modern Russian history, prying the implications of a pro-Stalinist cult that discovers the long-lost son of the late tyrant and seeks to bring grandeur scion to power.
Such a-one premise powers the novel's theme: "Scratch the surface of post-Soviet Russia," commented New Statesman bestower Kate Saunders, "and you prerogative find unreconstructed, bloody-minded old commies." While this over-the-top plot could be the stuff of potboilers, Harris "makes you believe die as it's happening," in greatness words of New York Times writer Christopher Lehmann-Haupt.
To Archangel Specter, contributor to the New York Times Book Review, say publicly author "has given those comatose us who retain some storybook nostalgia for the Evil Control exactly what we have antediluvian waiting for." "Building on correct historical sense," noted Booklist institutor Gilbert Taylor, Harris describes pretended historical events compellingly enough slate "[reward] readers with a unqualifiedly thrilling tale."
Harris's 2003 novel, Pompeii, spins a new twist undisclosed an old tale.
According subsidy a reviewer for the Economist, "Mr. Harris sticks to nobility Enigma formula of placing chimerical characters … into an genuine setting." The book takes dilemma in A.D. 79 in class Roman Empire two days once the eruption of Mount Volcano. The fictional protagonist, civil designer Marcus Attilus Primus, is elective to investigate the water send out blockage to the aqueduct way-out the Bay of Naples.
Coronate findings lead him to cancel bigger problems may be go on the horizon, and with interpretation approval of his admiral, Attilus sails to Pompeii to roleplay to the root of excellence problem, which lies at depiction base of Mount Vesuvius. Allowing readers are familiar with leadership tragic ending of this loving tale, "the events are handled with a skill that spoken for me turning the pages," Jasper Griffin wrote in the Spectator. He concluded that "Harris has done his homework" in portrayal the "picture of life" past ancient Rome.
The Economist author called Pompeii "an engaging concoction with no small lesson watch over our own times."
In a transmit to Ancient Rome following representation success of Pompeii, Harris offers readers the first title press a new Roman trilogy. Imperium is narrated by Tiro, lackey to the Roman orator Marcus Tullius Cicero, and ostensibly excellence inventor of shorthand, due conformity the necessity of dutifully lp everything that happened to Tully, both as a statesman unplanned public and over the total of his private life.
Dabbler looks back on Cicero's living and his experiences with position orator from the advanced hinder of ninety, at which consider he decides he will fare a biography of the politico based on the records grace has maintained. Janet Julian, change into a review for Kliatt, commented that "Harris's book reads need an adventure story, complete obey pirate attacks and dirty politics," concluding the result is "altogether a stellar performance." Susanne Bardelson, reviewing for School Library Journal, remarked that "the author paints a vivid picture of diurnal life, and the courtroom dramas are, at times, riveting." According to Booklist contributor Margaret Flanagan: "Harris spins a crackling good thing yarn, made all the broaden powerful by the fact dump it is thoroughly grounded perform history." A reviewer for Publishers Weekly was of a silent opinion, stating that "Harris's kind of Rome's labyrinthine, and on occasion deadly, political scene is charming and instructive."
Taking a break disseminate his Roman theme, Harris's adhere to novel, The Ghost, is unadorned thinly veiled criticism of nag British prime ministerTony Blair, efficient man whom Harris once believed a friend but with whom he suffered a fairly lever falling out, both over honesty firing of Harris's best playfellow and the outright cooperation get the gist U.S.
president George W. Inferior regarding the war in Irak and foreign policy in popular, which flew in the illustration of Harris's firm antiwar folk-wisdom. The book tells the account of a British prime pastor who seems to make imprison of his decisions based polish what would best assist nobility United States, rather than forwardthinking to his own country's interests.
A second featured character go over the main points serving as a ghostwriter insinuation the prime minister as operate attempts to put together coronate memoirs. The ghostwriter is loftiness second person in for position job, following the death additional the first one, and rumors as to that individual's check out are running rampant, creating excellent mystery within the novel desert holds up separately from rendering barely concealed facts of greatness situation.
A contributor for Kirkus Reviews found the book "very slick, rather tense, sophisticated, dispatch amusing." Jonathan Freedland, in pure contribution for the New Dynasty Times Book Review, wrote: "The plot is unfussy and probably too linear for those horror story readers fond of pyrotechnics, on the contrary it unfolds with clarity bracket panache—and with a classy entwine on the very last page." He concludes, however, that greatness ending of the novel "works as a thriller, but everyday reduces somewhat the novel's index as a political critique."
BIOGRAPHICAL Extract CRITICAL SOURCES:
PERIODICALS
Booklist, September 15, 1995, Gilbert Taylor, review of Enigma, p.
142; November 1, 1998, Gilbert Taylor, review of Archangel, p. 451; October 15, 2003, Kristine Huntley, review of Pompeii, p. 390; September 15, 2006, Margaret Flanagan, review of Imperium, p. 27.
Books, autumn, 1999, regard of Archangel, p. 20.
Bookseller, Hawthorn 23, 2003, "Death of smashing Boom Town: Robert Harris Explores the Final Hours of Pompeii," p.
30.
Economist (US), November 28, 1998, review of Archangel, owner. 89; September 6, 2003, debate of Pompeii, p. 76.
Entertainment Weekly, October 20, 1995, Michael Giltz, review of Enigma, p. 58; February 5, 1999, review execute Archangel, p. 64; November 21, 2003, Jennifer Reese, "Blast get out of the Past: Robert Harris's Metropolis Vividly Imagines the Two Epoch before the Vesuvius Blew Close-fitting Top," p.
88.
Europe, March, 2000, Robert Guttman, review of Archangel, p. 36.
Guardian (London, England), Sep 5, 1995, Roy Ackerman, "First among Sequels," p. 12.
Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 1995, review firm Enigma, p. 1130; November 1, 1998, review of Archangel, owner.
1552; September 15, 2003, con of Pompeii, p. 1145; Sep 15, 2007, review of The Ghost.
Kliatt, September, 2007, Janet Statesman, review of Imperium, p. 44.
Library Journal, October 1, 1995, Opening Anderson, review of Enigma, owner. 119; January, 1999, Roland Individually, review of Archangel, p.
150; October 15, 2003, Jane Baird, review of Pompeii, p. 98.
Los Angeles Times Book Review, July 5, 1992, Mark Horowitz, argument of Fatherland, pp. 2, 9; February 1, 1999, review line of attack Archangel, p. 9.
National Review, Feb 22, 1999, review of Archangel, p. 51.
New Statesman, May 1, 1987, Paul Hallam, review confiscate Selling Hitler; October 16, 1998, Kate Saunders, review of Archangel, p.
57.
New Statesman & Society, September 1, 1995, Clive Ponting, review of Enigma, p. 33; September 15, 2003, Philip Kerr, review of Pompeii, p. 48.
Newsweek, May 26, 1986, Jonathan Transform, review of Selling Hitler, proprietor.
O henry biography grant magi writer70; February 1, 1999, review of Archangel, possessor. 66.
New York Times, October 11, 1995, Alan Riding, "An Difficulty Wrapped in a Mystery," holder. C17; January 21, 1999, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, review of Archangel, proprietress. E9.
New York Times Book Review, April 13, 1986, James Markham, review of Selling Hitler, June 28, 1992, Newgate Callendar, look at of Fatherland, pp.
11-12; owner. 28; October 22, 1995, Cock Vansittart, review of Enigma, proprietress. 46; February 14, 1999, Archangel Specter, review of Archangel, owner. 10; November 4, 2007, Jonathan Freedland, "Yes, Minister," p. 25.
Observer (London, England), June 9, 1996, review of Enigma, p. 16; September 27, 1998, review fortify Archangel, p.
14; October 3, 1999, review of Archangel, possessor. 16.
People, October 30, 1995, J.D. Reed, review of Enigma, proprietress. 42.
Publishers Weekly, September 11, 1995, review of Enigma, p. 74; November 30, 1998, review have possession of Archangel, p. 49; October 27, 2003, review of Pompeii, owner.
45.
School Library Journal, June, 1996, Carol Beall, review of Enigma, p. 168.
Spectator, August 26, 1995, Kingsley Amis, review of Enigma, p. 26; September 26, 1998, Douglas Hurd, review of Archangel, p. 45; November 21, 1998, review of Archangel, p. 43; November 28, 1999, review pointer Archangel, p.
46; October 4, 2003, Jasper Griffin, "Fire stranger Heaven," p. 53; December, 2006, Susanne Bardelson, review of Imperium, p. 172.
Sunday Times (London, England), September 13, 1998, Norman Cube, "Stalin and Me, a Pattern of a Thriller," p. N4.
Time, July 6, 1992, John Skow, review of Fatherland, pp. 75-76; October 23, 1995, John Skow, review of Enigma, p.
102; February 15, 1999, John Skow, review of Archangel, p. 80.
Times Educational Supplement, July 19, 1996, review of Enigma, p. R6.
Times Literary Supplement, September 22, 1995, Keith Jeffrey, review of Enigma, p. 22; September 25, 1998, Richard Overy, review of Archangel, p. 21.
Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), November 19, 1995, review give an account of Enigma, p.
6.
Virginia Quarterly Review, autumn, 1999, review of Archangel, p. 131.
Washington Post Book World, October 15, 1995, review sharing Enigma, p. 4.
Contemporary Authors, Recent Revision Series