Having worked as a BBC television journalist, and as political editor for the Observer newspaper, Robert Harris published his debut novel Fatherland in 1992. A counterfactual story set in the 1960s that imagines Nazi Germany had won the Second World War, the book was a global bestseller. Since then Robert Harris has written 15 novels, mainly historical fiction which ranges from the ancient Roman politics of Pompeii and his Cicero trilogy, to the Restoration era manhunt of Act Of Oblivion, and Papal thriller Conclave. His most recent novel Precipice is about the romantic relationship between prime minister Herbert Asquith young socialite Venetia Stanley during the First World War.

Robert Harris tells John Wilson about how reading The Origins of the Second World War by the historian A. J. P. Taylor, as a teenager ignited his interest in looking at history from perspectives that challenge the accepted narratives. Later, reading both the fiction and non-fiction of George Orwell inspired him to attempt to make writing about politics into an art form, as Orwell had done in works including 1984.

Producer: Edwina Pitman

Archive used: Did Hitler Cause The War?, BBC1, 9 July 1961 The Hitler Diaries, Newsnight, BBC2, 8 July 1985 Reading from Fatherland, Robert Harris Reading from 1984, George Orwell, BBC Radio 4, 2 January 1984 Reading from The Ghost, Robert Harris