Robert Harris takes his time…

“Don’t rush it,” was Robert Harris’ advice to would-be writers at Cheltenham on Wednesday night, announcing that his latest book had been in the making for more than a decade. Harris told a crowd gathered in the Garden Theatre that he’d been jotting down ideas for The Ghost as early as 1994 — and he had the notebook in hand to prove it.

It’s no surprise that Harris was quick to play up his novel’s lengthy genesis – since publication the critics have delighted in picking out every aspect of The Ghosts very contemporary political satire. Harris’ narrator is a professional ghostwriter hired to record the memoirs of a former British Prime Minister, now exiled in an American holiday resort in fear that a return to the UK might lead to prosecution for war crimes. It presumably had the Random legal department choking on their contracts.

Harris seemed fatalistic, if disappointed, at this reception:

I had always said I would never write a contemporary political novel, because people would consider it a roman à clef, try to work out who this character is supposed to be, or that character — which is how it’s turned out.

He was keen to emphasise that his story is entirely his own, and particularly eager to deny that his protagonist’s tangled love lives might have any possible basis in reality. “It was just what the characters demanded. I didn’t realise what was going to happen until the second I wrote it.”

According to Harris, a lot of the best writing is done ‘in the subconscious’ — and in this respect The Ghost‘s twelve year gestation clearly paid off. In writing terms this is the quickest manuscript he’s ever completed, knocked out in a four month break from his Roman Imperium trilogy.

And while previous efforts Enigma and Pompeii had each demanded as much as two years research, the ground work for The Ghost was laid in a week-long US stay in well-to-do Martha’s Vineyard. The coastal town quickly proved the ideal setting for the drama: “There is nothing more evocative than a seaside resort out of season.”

The Q&A ranged widely, from film versions of his books (“Fatherland was a car-crash of an adaptation”); to the continuing trend for ghost written novels and misery memoirs (“deeply depressing”); even veering briefly to the book’s digital future. But despite the ease of writing in a familiar political world, Harris is clearly looking forward to returning to the Ancient Romans for his next thriller: “I’m heading back to the togas,” he finished, “Where no-one can sue…”