Robert Harris
Robert Harris was born on 7 March 1957 in Nottingham and holds United Kingdom citizenship. He received his early education at King Edward VII School in Melton Mowbray before going on to study at Selwyn College, two institutions that mark the geographic arc of his formation from the English Midlands to higher education.
Harris has worked as a journalist, reporter, and member of an editing staff, and has also established himself as a novelist and screenwriter. He writes in English, and his fiction is particularly associated with historical fiction, a genre to which he has contributed works including Fatherland and Munich. He has additionally been identified as a science fiction writer, indicating a range that extends beyond a single narrative mode. His work as a screenwriter brought him recognition in film, earning him the European Film Award for Best Screenwriter, the European Film Award for Best Film, and the César Award for Best Adaptation.
Harris has received recognition from literary and professional bodies in the United Kingdom and beyond. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a distinction reflecting his standing within British letters. He also received the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, an award associated with thriller writing, and was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
His career encompasses journalism, editorial work, novel writing, and screenwriting, with formal recognition from institutions in Britain and across Europe attesting to the breadth of that output. His novel Munich stands among his notable works and represents one of the titles for which he has received sustained recognition.
Quotes by Robert Harris
Robert Harris's insights on:
One cannot see any world leader who has got a grip on the financial markets these days. They’re too big, too fast. I think that’s quite scary.
Against the alchemy of two naked bodies in a bed in the darkness, and against all the complex longings and attachments and commitments such intimacy might arouse, he had nothing with which to fight.
That so many people can derive so much pleasure from such a revolting spectacle,” he said to me when he returned home that night, “almost makes one doubt the very premise on which democracy is based.” But he was pleased nevertheless that the masses now thought of him as a good sport, as well as “the Scholar” and “the Greek.
The Spartan statesman Lycurgus, seven hundred years ago, is said to have observed: When falls on man the anger of the gods, First from his mind they banish understanding. Such was to be the fate of Caesar. I am sure Cicero was correct: he had gone mad. His success had made him vain, and his vanity had devoured his reason.
His theory of oratory, the exact opposite of the Asiatics’, was simple: don’t move about too much, hold your head straight, stick to the point, make ’em laugh, make ’em cry, and when you’ve won their sympathy, sit down quickly –.
So,” said Ruth, “how bad is it?” “You haven’t read it?” “Not all of it.” “Well,” I said, politely, “it needs some work.” “How much?” The words “Hiroshima” and “nineteen forty-five” floated briefly into my mind. “It’s fixable,” I said, which I suppose it was: even Hiroshima was fixed eventually.
What fascinates people isn’t policy- who cares about policy? What fascinates people is always people- the detail of another person’s life.
History has always fascinated me. As Cicero himself once wrote: ‘To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?’ I quickly forgot the cold and could have spent all day happily unwinding that roll, poring over the events of more than sixty years before.